


Great Omens (The Big One)

by falsepremise



Series: From Good to Great [3]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Humanity (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Live Together (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley in every chapter, Aziraphale and Crowley working together, Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Banter, Can be read as stand alone, Comedy, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Humanity (Good Omens), Dramatic Crowley (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Future, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Heaven and Hell vs Humanity, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Making Out, Multi, Original Character(s), Other, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Post-Canon, Religious Themes, Sequel, Sexy, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), South Downs living, The Big One, book and show canon mushed together, canon-typical abusive and cult-like behaviour by Heaven and Hell, canon-typical trauma symptoms, celestial sex, deep philosophical questions, intermingling, our own side, show treated as primary canon, they're switches, this is a full-on sequel guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-02-21 22:30:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 134,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22104691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsepremise/pseuds/falsepremise
Summary: A narrative of certain events leading up to The Big One, in strict accordance, as shall be shown, with the nice and accurate prophesies of Agnes Nutter, witch.A Good Omens sequel, set thirty years in the future...Thirty years after a failed Armageddon we must face The Big One, as Heaven and Hell, working together, enact a plan to fix the world or destroy it forever. Meanwhile, Aziraphale and Crowley discover that truly being on their own side has more implications than they’d ever have guessed.Changes to the basic metaphysics of the universe. A second book of prophesies. Mysterious twins on a mission. Hijinks and shenanigans.  Deep questions, laughs, ridiculous banter and sexy stuff. Welcome to my attempt at an epic Good Omens sequel.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: From Good to Great [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919863
Comments: 273
Kudos: 121





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've come here after reading In the Ashes, a Seed then you'll notice that the first chapter here gives a glimpse of what In the Ashes, a Seed recounts in full-- that night at Crowley's flat. The glimpse needs to remain here too so each fic can stand alone. Everything else in this fic will be new for you. If you are planning on skimming over Aziraphale and Crowley's section in the first chapter that's fine but I recommend that you pause and read the final three lines, before continuing on.

_The seeds of The Big One, along with other seeds of metaphysical significance, were sown some thirty years prior in the wake of an Armageddon that wasn’t to be…_

**The evening of Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**A bus driving to London though the driver doesn’t know why**

Aziraphale felt the bus lurch forward dramatically before he could take a seat. Crowley quickly offered a steadying hand and Aziraphale instinctively reached out and took it. He sat, with Crowley’s assistance, and the bus drove on. With Crowley’s hand now in his own, with that yawning gulf now bridged Aziraphale certainly wasn’t going to let go. And so he sat and he kept holding on tight. He kept holding on like his life depended on it, like he’d been wanting to reach out for, oh, several thousand years. Crowley’s hand was warm and welcoming and Aziraphale was gratified to find that he held on just as tightly.

It wasn’t until the bus pulled onto the main road stretching onto London that it occurred to Aziraphale that the lurching of the bus may have had something of the demonic intervention to it. He couldn’t bring himself to mind. In fact, when he considered the possibility, he found himself smiling.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Crowley asked.

‘Nothing,’ Aziraphale replied, his eyes darting to make contact with Crowley’s and then quickly darting away again, ‘It has just been quite a day.’

Crowley snorted at the understatement.

They sat together silently for awhile each lost in their own thoughts. Finally, Aziraphale broke the comfortable silence.

‘Crowley?’ Aziraphale said, turning towards him as he spoke.

‘Hmm?’

Aziraphale’s forehead creased slightly, ‘I believe I owe you an apology.’

‘What for?’ Crowley answered incredulously.

‘For not coming to you straight away when I figured out where Adam was. For my misplaced loyalty. You were right: we are on our own side. I am sorry I didn’t always act like it.’

Crowley made an incomprehensible sound of acknowledgement. Then he sighed, ‘S’alright, Angel.’

Aziraphale watched Crowley’s reaction carefully, his own eyes welling with tears. He blinked them back and looked away. Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hand slightly, just enough for Aziraphale to know it had happened.

Crowley considered it settled. Aziraphale knew that. But he still couldn’t let it go. He turned back.

‘I really am very sorry, Crowley. I’ve behaved most abominably towards you.’

Crowley made another incomprehensible sound of acknowledgement.

Aziraphale swallowed hard, keeping tears at bay, ‘Do you forgive me then?’

Crowley looked directly at Aziraphale, flicking his sunglasses off so Aziraphale could see his unblinking golden eyes. After a beat he said tenderly, ‘that what you are wanting? Forgiveness?’

Aziraphale’s eyes darted around, ‘I suppose so,’ he replied nervously, ‘ _your_ forgiveness at any rate.’

Crowley stared unblinking, ‘S’nothing to forgive.’

‘But I treated you horribly,’ Aziraphale said his voice shaking slightly, ‘I didn’t trust you, when clearly you alone are the only person I can trust, the only one I’ve been able to rely upon for all these years.’

Crowley shrugged, still staring. When he spoke he spoke softly, ‘you always did your best by me, angel. You did your best in a difficult situation. You think I don’t know how difficult it was for you? You don’t deserve to be punished for doing your best. No one does...’

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip nervously, looking into Crowley’s golden eyes and seeing nothing but acceptance.

‘Don’t need an apology. But it would be nice, angel, if you could cut the bullshit.’

‘What?’ Aziraphale flinched in shock.

Crowley chuckled at Aziraphale’s reaction. ‘Jus’ mean in the future remember that we are on our own side and act like it.’

‘Well, I don’t think I’m likely to forget that now!’

Crowley considered this. ‘You might. As ridiculous as that is, you might. To ensure you don’t you need to stop lying, angel. To yourself and to me.’

‘I never…’

‘Shh…’ Crowley said putting their joined hands up to Aziraphale’s mouth. The intimacy of the touch instantly quieted Aziraphale.

‘You _do_ … ‘S alright if you want to keep up all those little cute lies. You can keep saying you don’t know the song ‘fat bottomed girls’ even though I’ve heard you humming it, you can keep saying that you ended up captured in the Bastille by accident and not as part of an elaborate plan to take me out for crepes in Paris, and we can both pretend you don’t have a selection of dirty books on the bottom shelf of the third bookshelf from the couch…’

Aziraphale blushed, ‘I do not have a selection of…of…’

Crowley raised his eyebrows, ‘I have _seen_ them, angel.’

‘They are _literature_ ,’ Aziraphale replied with irritation.

‘Banned literature. Literature banned for being erotic and encouraging sin.’

‘ _Literature_.’

‘Whatever. You can keep all of those little lies and you can keep lying to everyone else. Lie to _them_ all you want about anything you want,’ Crowley barked out a laugh, ‘I’m completely fine with that. But you’ve got to stop repeating _their_ bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to agree with me. But you are _clever_ , Aziraphale, you’ve got to think things through and stick to your conclusions. Trust your own instincts. Work out what _you_ think. And definitely, absolutely, no more lying to yourself or to me about what really matters,’ he paused and squeezed Aziraphale’s hand tightly, his voice softening, ‘no more lying about _this_.’

Aziraphale looked down at their interlinked hands. He brushed his thumb up and down Crowley’s finger. Crowley made a little wordless noise.

Aziraphale smiled. His eyes welled with tears again and this time one finally escaped. It trickled down Aziraphale’s cheek. He looked back up to Crowley’s face, meeting his eyes, now gold all the way to the edges.

‘No more lying about us,’ Aziraphale said with an air of absolute certainty and solid resolution, ‘We are on our own side.’

The universe— still a little soft and malleable from the ministrations of Adam Young— shivered and the seed of something new came into being, tiny and in need of nurturance to grow, but brought into existence just the same.

Crowley and Aziraphale did not notice. The bus rolled on.

**Thirty years after Amageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty seven days until The Big One**

**A café in London**

Two older teenage girls, right on the verge adulthood, twins—mirror images of each other, in fact, both with perfect ebony skin, luscious black curls and eyes so dark and bright they brought to mind the night sky—frowned as they looked over the café’s menu. The twins were immaculately dressed in designer label attire but in a way that was entirely too adult for their age, as if they were both high-end executives in their forties instead of kids standing on the precipice of adulthood.

‘It all sounds pretty gross,’ the first said with a frown, twisting a dark curl around her finger.

The second girl peered at the plates of the other customers around them, ‘It all _looks_ pretty gross too, Evie.’

‘Well I suppose it is gross matter, Lil,’ Evie said with a smile.

‘Terrible,’ said Lil, ‘I’m not paying that one at all.’

Evie sighed, ‘Look, I think we are just going to have to grit our teeth and do it. You know what Archangel Gabriel said. We are partly human. If we don’t eat while we are down here we will waste away.’

‘Right,’ Lil said with a grimace, looking around at what the other customers are eating, ‘what about that,’ she said pointing, ‘I think it is called chips.’

Evie frowned over the menu, ‘alright. Let’s try chips,’ placed the order on the self-service machine while Lil waited at their table, fiddling with the packets of sugar.

Evie soon returned with a buzzer, ‘All ordered. I don’t think it will take long.’

A few minutes later their buzzer buzzed and Evie collected a plate of steaming hot chips from the counter. Evie put it in the centre of their table and Lil frowned at the food in front of them.

Evie picked one up and promptly dropped it again, ‘argh! Hot!’

‘Well they have been cooked, Evie.’

They waited out the cooling time, Lil drumming her fingers on the table all the while, ‘Reckon they are ready now.’

‘Alright.’

They reached out together, each choosing a chip, and took a bite. Their teeth cut easily through the crispy exterior, and the soft fluffy white potato inside exploded into their mouths. They chewed and swallowed.

‘What did you think?’ Evie asked.

‘Um… Actually it wasn’t as bad as I feared,’ Lil replied, ‘I’m going to try another one.’

They both continued, working their way through the plate. Evie noticed another customer adding salt to their chips and so she shook the salt shaker over their chips too and they agreed that the salt definitely improved the meal.

By the time they had reached the end of the plate they agreed that eating wasn’t quite as horrible as they had thought it would be. There was a strange fullness to their stomachs, but it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was kind of satisfying.

‘We should try something else next time,’ Evie suggested.

Lil nodded enthusiastically, and then made a face.

‘What?’

‘Oh, I have just remembered. The really disgusting bit is still to come, isn’t it?’ Lil explained with a grimace.

Evie’s wide eyes stared back, ‘you don’t mean?’

‘Yeah, I mean it has to come out, you know, the other end,’ Lil whispered, leaning forward.

Evie’s face scrunched up in disgust, ‘I don’t even want to think about it. How long do you think it’ll take?’

Lil shrugged, ‘Dunno. A few minutes at least surely.’

‘Gross! We need to know. How are we going to, you know, get there in time?’

‘Good point,’ Lil looked around her and picked a friendly looking young woman at a neighbouring table to approach, ‘excuse me? How long does food normally take to travel through the digestion system?’

The young woman quirked an eyebrow, ‘Not sure. A few days? Why don’t you google it?’

‘Google it?’

‘Yeah on your UD?’ the woman said, pronouncing UD by saying the letters U and D and gesturing to a bangle around her wrist.

‘Oh I don’t have one of those!’ Lil replied, ‘does it have all the answers? You can ask it anything?’

The woman shrugged, ‘pretty much.’

‘Could I find a place to live on it? A job? How cars work? How to make chips?’

‘Yeah,’ the woman’s eyes narrowed, ‘are you winding me up?’

‘Nah, just not from around here,’ Lil replied.

The woman nodded. She was still confused—the contrast between the teen’s designer clothes and her terrible knowledge of technology made no sense—but she didn’t want to be cold to someone who might genuinely be in need of compassion. She pointed to the bangle again. ‘It is called a universal device or a UD or even just device. It is, well… it does everything. It’s a computer, it connects to the net, you can text, access social media, it has all the biometrics and you can, I dunno, make phone calls. Check the time. Whatever. You get a screen and glasses with it.’

She took a tiny screen out of her handbag and unfolded it until it was large enough to see clearly on. ‘You can interact with it by voice or touch and you can bring up a keyboard to type if you want. You can use the glasses to do the same thing but with augmented reality. Um… AR means the screen isn’t really there. Only you can see it through the glasses. I don’t have mine on me, sorry, I don’t use AR when I’m out. But, look: hey device – how long does food normally take to travel through the digestive system?’

The screen display instantly changed. There was a large diagram of a digestive system and the answer: 1-3 days. More detailed information appeared underneath. ‘There you go 1-3 days.’

‘Wow,’ Lil said. She had not followed much of the young woman’s explanation but she had firmly grasped that UDs were powerful and cool and she needed one now. ‘How do I get one?’

‘Any department store or electronics store will have them. There’s an electronics store a few blocks up from here, actually. That way,’ the woman answered, pointing.

‘Thanks very much. You’ve been really helpful.’

The young woman smiled, ‘you’re welcome. Have a nice day.’

Lil turned back to Evie, ‘we’ve a day at least for the whole digestion thing. But we need to get ourselves universal devices. Apparently, you can um… google stuff and it tells you whatever you need to know. Like, anything.’

Evie nodded, ‘Useful. Alright then, Lil. Lead the way.’


	2. Chapter 2

**Thirty years after Amageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty five days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

‘I’m ready,’ Aziraphale announced with absolute certainty as he entered the lounge room. His eyes were dancing with excitement and his face lit up with joy.

Crowley was lounging on the couch. He looked up from the foldable screen of his universal device, brushing a crimson curl back behind his ear with the rest of his cascading red hair, ‘Hm? For dinner? I thought we agreed we’d leave at six thirty?’

‘Not for dinner,’ Aziraphale replied with an excited wiggle, ‘for Operation Our Side.’

‘Oh!’ Crowley’s eyes widened and the gold bled outwards, quickly extending all the way to the edge.

‘You’re not ready?’ Aziraphale said, wringing his hands and sitting down beside Crowley.

‘Didn’t say that. Just…we hadn’t talked about it for awhile. ‘m a bit surprised,’ Crowley replied.

‘So you are ready then?’ Aziraphale said with another excited wiggle.

‘Didn’t say that either, angel.’

‘I know we haven’t been talking about it. But I have been thinking about it. This,’ Aziraphale sighed, ‘I suppose it has been coming on gradually. And well, I’m ready.’

‘Look, angel, let’s talk it through. We agreed we needed to lie low for a bit, give ourselves some time to just rest. Deal with our shit.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Well, I don’t think we need to lie quite so low anymore. I think they truly are going to leave us alone. At least until something new happens.'

Crowley sighed, ‘I think you are right. But we also said that we’d start up Operation Our Side once we’d properly rested up, sorted ourselves out…’

‘And settled in to the new aspects of our relationship,’ Aziraphale added, his eyes darting away and back again, as his face lit up with a coy smile.

Crowley smiled back, a slow lazy smile of adoration, ‘yes, exactly. So, are we healed up enough? And are we settled in enough?’

‘Well, I think I am. I’m _happy_ , Crowley. And very happy with you, my dear. Happier then I’ve ever been. I just want to do things again, to be useful. That’s the only thing that’s missing.’

Crowley stroked his throat as he considered this, ‘m happy too. Don’t want to ruin it though.’

‘We can always pull back if it is too much.’

‘Ngh.’

‘I’d really like to try, Crowley.’

‘You haven’t completely given up your bullshit,’ Crowley countered.

‘You said I could keep my little discretions.’

Crowley snorted, ‘Discretions?!’

‘Well, whatever you want to call them.’

‘Bullshit, angel. Lies, deceit, fibs, fabrication, dishonesty, bullshit.’

Aziraphale fidgeted primly, ‘You said they were cute as I recall. Said you you’d always found it a bit adorable.’

Crowley made an incomprehensible noise but he didn’t deny it.

‘The point is, I know what I think now, Crowley. You don’t hear me repeating Heaven’s lies anymore and I don’t lie to you about anything important.’

‘Let’s test you then. What do you think of the Archangel Michael?’

‘Michael is…um… rather a…er… bad angel.’

Crowley frowned, ‘He’s a complete wanker. And Gabriel?’

‘Gabriel is not all an Archangel should be. He harbours a number of fundamental misunderstandings about the Great Plan and ineffability. I find his management style to be quite disappointing. If I am ever able to speak directly to the Almighty again I will be putting in a formal complaint in the strongest possible terms.’

Crowley shook his head and sighed, ‘Oh, angel. Gabriel is a psychopathic arsehole of epic proportions and if he ever,’ Crowley’s voice turned menacing, ‘ _ever_ hurts you again I’ll tear his stupid…’

‘Crowley!’ Aziraphale interrupted with a disapproving frown.

‘Ssssorry, angel,’ Crowley hissed sheepishly. Aziraphale didn’t like it when Crowley launched into violent threats, not even against Gabriel. He cleared his throat, ‘What about Heaven, you know, in general?’

‘I think it is being run quite inappropriately. I don’t understand how it is possible but they don’t seem to be in contact with um… Head Office anymore. And until the Almighty reveals her wishes to me directly I will have to be guided by my own personal conscience.’

Crowley considered this carefully.

‘Every word of that was quite true,’ Aziraphale said.

‘You didn’t lie and you didn’t repeat Heaven’s lies,’ Crowley agreed, ‘That is what you genuinely think.’

Aziraphale nodded as if that decided it. But Crowley continued in a hoarse whisper, ‘What about me? Do you really think I’m ready?’

Aziraphale paused. He hadn’t expected that question. ‘Well, I suppose I assumed you were,’ his brow creased as he considered the question properly, ‘Let me play _devil’s_ advocate as it were…’

Crowley snorted at the deliberate reference and Aziraphale’s eyes danced with the happiness of knowing that Crowley had caught it. It was an old game, but still a good one.

‘Let’s see… Our garden is flourishing and happy. You haven’t staged a public execution of one of the underperforming plants in quite some time. Though, that said, I did notice you yelling at the roses the other day…’

‘Roses need a firm hand, angel, I don’t care what fanciful nonsense you’ve come up with from reading Freud and Jung, that’s just good gardening.’

Aziraphale eyed Crowley with some scepticism. Eventually he tutted, ‘perhaps… hm… while you still drive entirely too fast by human standards you are significantly less reckless than you once were.’

Crowley shrugged, ‘Discorporation would be more then an inconvenience now. But all that doesn’t mean I don’t still enjoy taking the Bentley out for a spin. Anyway, I control the traffic, angel, it is all perfectly safe. Well, your verdict?’

‘I think so. As long as you feel ready.’

Crowley frowned. ‘I don’t feel ready,’ he said with a sigh.

Aziraphale's face fell in an instant and he crumpled in on himself. A moment later he was wearing a forced smile, ‘Oh. Well, I certainly don’t think we should do it if you aren’t ready. I can wait for you.’

‘I don’t know if I _ever_ will feel ready though. Maybe we need to just leap in at a certain point. I don’t think we are done dealing with our shit either but perhaps Operation Our Side could actually help with that,’ Crowley paused a moment while he came to some kind of conclusion, ‘If you are sure you want to, I’ll do it.’

‘Oh, thank-you,’ Aziraphale’s face lit up with unadulterated joy and Crowley was overwhelmed with his love for the ridiculous angel. It felt like Aziraphale reached right into Crowley’s chest, grabbed his heart and cracked it open, letting all sorts of warm feelings seep out into his body. 

‘Nffh,’ he waved away the angel’s gratitude.

Aziraphale threw his arms around Crowley and Crowley groaned softly at the sudden contact. Aziraphale kissed Crowley fiercely, his tongue easily finding welcome entrance. Crowley pulled Aziraphale in close, moaning into the kiss.

Aziraphale broke off the kiss with a happy sigh and cuddled into Crowley’s arms.

‘Things I do for you, angel,’ Crowley whispered, kissing Aziraphale’s head.

‘We can start small,’ Aziraphale said, ‘Something simple. Find a person who needs some help. A sick child, maybe? Or perhaps we find a nice little book that we can assure the success of? Or an artist we can support? We’ve always done little things like that ourselves. It can be as simple as that for now.’

‘Nah, angel, we need to start with something so clearly us there’s no way we’ll slip,’ Crowley paused a beat and Aziraphale concluded that when Crowley said _we’ll slip_ he was almost certainly talking about _Aziraphale slipping_ , ‘if we are doing this we start big. Really big.’

‘Alright dear, if you say so.’

‘Hmmm….. Let’s get to dinner. We can talk it through later tonight.’

They rose off the couch and hand in hand, strode down to the Bentley. Crowley opened the passenger door for Aziraphale, ‘In you get, angel.’

‘Thank-you,’ Aziraphale replied with a soft smile.

Crowley’s knees buckled slightly and his heart began to race. He wondered if Aziraphale’s thank yous were ever going to stop having that effect on him. After 6000 years of mostly avoiding such expressions they seemed to have acquired ridiculous power. And now Aziraphale could simply throw the words around. It was fine to go to pieces after being thanked for agreeing to begin Operation Our Side. But to go to pieces after being thanked for merely opening a door? Not so much.

Crowley slipped in behind the wheel, ‘The little Italian place, right?’

Aziraphale nodded.

The Bentley roared to life and was soon moving at glorious speed down the bending country road, towards a rather special Italian restaurant, blasting out Queen hits as it went. The restaurant was one of a number of rather special restaurants that had sprung up and miraculously thrived within towns and villages in the South Downs area in the past thirty years. Crowley deftly controlled the traffic in front of him to prevent any accidents. That particular miracle was much easier now that the majority of cars on the road were driverless. There was so much less to keep track of.

Aziraphale held on tightly and bit his lip to stop himself complaining. Crowley had definitely gotten less reckless over the years and Aziraphale felt he had to give him some kind of credit for that. The credit he chose to give was at least attempting to bite back complaints. He didn’t always succeed.

Pulling into their usual space just outside the restaurant, Aziraphale took a deep breath and fussed with his coat to recover as Crowley sauntered around the car to open his door.

They walked in hand in hand and were immediately greeted with delight by owner and manager, Lucia Bianchi. Despite the popularity of automated cafes and restaurants, little speciality restaurants with personal service still existed too. They thrived in South Downs.

‘Signor Fell and Signor Crowley! How wonderful! And as usual you have marvellous luck. A table has just become free!’ Lucia enthused as she hurried them to it.

‘Has it?’ Crowley answered with a little sideways grin, ‘how fortunate.’

‘Signor Fell and Signor Crowley are here, Marco!’ Lucia called out loudly to her husband, owner and chef. 

‘Tell Signor Fell I recommend the lamb, the special!’ Marco called out from the kitchens.

‘Marco recommends the lamb on the specials menu,’ Lucia repeated, pointing to the lamb on the specials list as she passed Aziraphale a menu.

‘Thank-you, Lucia dear.’

‘You truly do have remarkable fortune. Every time you come here a table just opens up for you,’ Lucia returned to her previous chain of thought with a head shake, ‘you must, indeed, be favoured by the gods.’

Crowley snorted, ‘I assure you we are not. She certainly never liked me.’

‘Oh, Signor Crowley, you do make me laugh,’ Lucia cackled as she left them to peruse their menus.

Aziraphale tried to focus on his menu but he was quite ruffled. He pursed his lips in disapproval. Eventually he leaned over his menu and whispered to Crowley, ‘I think you’ll find I still have her favour and I, for one, don’t think she ever truly disliked you either.’

Crowley snorted again, ‘She sent me to Hell, angel. Bit of a giveaway that. Anyway, you’ve never really fessed up about…’ he pronounced the next bit slowly and melodically almost singing it for dramatic emphasis, ‘the flaming sword…’

Aziraphale’s face turned immediately into a storm of emotion. He tutted and fussed and returned to his menu fidgeting in his seat.

Crowley made his choice and put his menu down, noticing the state Aziraphale was in, ‘Oh, angel, stop fussing. I was only joking. What’s got you all worked up?’

‘You don’t think she...’ Aziraphale’s voice trailed off.

‘No!’ Crowley answered emphatically. Then he rather spoiled the effect by following it up with a doubtful, ‘Probably not. You never can tell with her.’

Aziraphale did not look sufficiently comforted. He fussed and fidgeted with his jacket and the cutlery.

Crowley sighed. He reached across the table and grasped Aziraphale’s fidgeting hands in his own and squeezed. When Aziraphale met his eyes he said warmly, ‘You are the best of all the angels, Aziraphale. If she cannot see that she isn’t worth it. I _am_ certain of that. Anyway, I’m sure you are just fine.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Right. Right. Of course I am,’ he took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, visibly relaxing.

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hands again. Clearly, he was right to be worried about Aziraphale slipping. The best chance of preventing it was coming up with just the right joint mission. If they could make this transition well, Aziraphale would never be at risk of slipping again. His mind whirled in the background, trying to piece it together. He smiled at Aziraphale.

‘Besides, when did anyone last hear from her? She’s probably off somewhere up there,’ Crowley waved towards the ceiling, ‘creating Earth 2.0 with intelligent squid or cat people or actual dinosaurs or something.’

Aziraphale looked up at the ceiling as if the whereabouts of the Almighty might, indeed, be inscribed on it somewhere.

Lucia appeared at the table again ready to take their order, ‘What will it be tonight?’

Aziraphale smiled, glad to be torn away from his reflections to focus on more earthy matters, ‘I’ll have the gnocchi and the lamb, I admit Marco did _tempt_ me with that special,’ Crowley snorted at the use of the word tempt as Aziraphale continued, ‘with a side of caprese salad.’

‘Excellent Signor Fell. And for Signor Crowley?’

‘Just the zucchini risotto for me,’ Crowley replied.

‘No secondo?’ Lucia clarified loudly, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

‘No. Unless there was something you wanted to help yourself to, angel?’ Crowley looked across to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale shook his head sheepishly. He did have a tendency to pick at Crowley’s plate.

‘Oh dear, Signor Crowley. You do not eat enough. You will waste away,’ Lucia declared dramatically.

Crowley smirked.

‘And to drink?’

‘A bottle of our usual red. Thanks.’

Lucia gathered up the menus and Aziraphale and Crowley settled in. They enjoyed their meal thoroughly and followed it up with desert. Aziraphale ordered the tiramisu and Crowley a semifreddo that he insisted Aziraphale eat half of. The conversation flowed as freely as the wine, but they avoided discussing Operation Our Side. Crowley was stalling. He knew he needed a little more time for his mind to whirl in the background.

Instead, they reminisced, discussing memories of the Italian Renaissance, both good and bad. Crowley shuddered to recall the Borgias. He had been given several entirely unnecessary assignments involving tempting various members of that particular family. Aziraphale lit up as he recalled seeing Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel for the very first time, the paint barely dry. Crowley laughed as he remembered assisting Leonardo Da Vinci with his flying machines, trying to give Leonardo hints without making it obvious that Crowley’s ideas were based in his own very real experience with flying and wings. Aziraphale smiled and enjoyed the story for even though he had heard it quite a few times before it was a particularly good one. He had delighted in Leonardo’s company as well. A most rare human being and such a dear friend to Crowley.

As they paid for their meal, and returned home, the Bentley once again roaring along the country roads, Crowley cackled in delight as he told Aziraphale of witnessing first hand Galileo Galilei whispering ‘and yet it moves’ after being forced to publicly deny the heliocentric model of the universe in 1633.

Aziraphale tutted as Crowley helped him out of the car.

‘What’s the matter, angel? He was right. The Earth does move around the bloody sun. Why shouldn’t he say it?’

‘I’m not tutting at _Galileo_ ,’ Aziraphale replied with a sniff, ‘I’m tutting at _you_. You are taking entirely too much joy in this particular story and you know why.’

Crowley shrugged, amused, and sauntered into their cottage, ‘More wine, I think?’

Aziraphale nodded.

Crowley produced a bottle of red and poured two glasses, ‘Where did he end up, anyway?’

‘Galileo? One of yours I think. Or was he one of ours in the end? I confess I don’t recall.’

‘One of Heaven’s or one of Hell’s, angel. None of them come to _us_ ,’ Crowley said, flopping onto the couch and beckoning for Aziraphale to sit down beside him, ‘speaking of which: academic publishing.’

‘What?’ Aziraphale’s forehead creased in pure confusion.

‘S a con, angel. Absolute corrupt mess of a thing.’

‘Is it?’ Aziraphale frowned, taking a sip of his wine. He had no idea what Crowley was on about. But conversations with Crowley could often be like this. Sometimes you had to be patient and wait for the point to emerge.

‘Oh yes. A total rort. You know how it used to be royal society of such and such getting together and publishing a journal of whatever? Nah, not anymore. All got owned by corporations somehow and all the academics and scientists and whatnot are like enslaved to them or something? Have to buy their own work back? I don’t quite understand that bit.’

Aziraphale frowned. It didn’t make any sense to him either.

‘Wors’ bit is it locks knowledge down, doesn’t it? Makes it into a commodity. Something you’ve got to _pay_ for,’ Crowley said with a sneer.

Oh. Aziraphale instantly understood why this mattered so much to Crowley, ‘Well, I can certainly understand why _that_ would bother the Serpent of Eden.’

Crowley snorted and waved his hands dramatically, ‘S fucked. Slows it all down. Slows progress down. Stops them inventing teleportation and warp drive and finding ways to communicate with dolphins or whatever it is they do now days.’

‘Find cures for diseases,’ Aziraphale said at once.

‘Yes!’ Crowley yelled pointing, ‘Good example. Stops them curing the plague or pox or whatever.’

‘Cancer,’ Aziraphale corrected, ‘and that gene therapy stuff. That’s the latest thing. More and more cancers and genetic diseases are being cured every day, I believe. Oh, and stem cells. No idea what they are but they are important too, I think…’

‘Whatever. The point is…’

‘Why don’t they just write books?’ Aziraphale interrupted.

Crowley thought about this a moment quickly seeing the opportunity, ‘Book publishing ‘s corrupt too. All about,’ Crowley waved his hands about dismissively, ‘marketability. Same ol’ boring tropes by the same ol’ writers. Not ‘bout publishing decent literature, not ‘bout publishing something new. Wilde, Shelley, Poe, Austen, they’d all struggle to get published today,’ Crowley declared with a sense of absolutely certainty driven not by actual certainty but the knowledge that he’d found a point that Aziraphale would be particularly sympathetic to and he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to make the most of it.

‘Would they?’ Aziraphale frowned. How awful. Although he was a committed book lover he read so extensively that, with a few notable exceptions of great literary merit, he was nearly a century behind. Plus, a lot of modern books were only published as e-books, not as paper copies and Aziraphale still hadn’t quite gotten his head around that. He knew very little about the current book industry and had to take Crowley’s word for it. ‘Sorry, what’s your point?’

‘Operation Our Side. That’s my point.’

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale’s eyes lit up, ‘you want to revolutionise publishing somehow? For our first project? Put publishing in the hands of the academics and the writers themselves?’

‘Something like that,’ Crowley said, ‘Tear the publishing industry down. Take all the academic journals all the books and find a way to make it all just available to everyone for free.’

‘Well, it is a good idea and something I’d definitely support but it seems just a bit um…grand for our first joint project don’t you think?

‘We agreed on big,’ Crowley countered.

‘No, you _declared_ that it had to be big. And there’s a difference between big and grand. That sounds like a project that would take years, a decade even to truly bring to fruition. I’d like to start with something we can do within weeks, months at the most.’

‘Fair point. So we shelve that idea for now?’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘I think so, dear.’

‘Alright,’ Crowley agreed taking a sip of wine, ‘well, they’ve got to be building a new road somewhere in Britain, right? So we find it and we alter the plans so when it is built it resembles an ancient symbol meaning freedom or knowledge or something?’

‘That’s just your M25 project, Crowley!’

‘Ah, yeah it’s similar I’ll give you that but it is still a good idea. Some of my best work the M25.’

‘Yes, I particularly liked the way it caught on fire during the end times,’ Aziraphale said with an eye roll.

‘I didn’t _plan_ on that bit,’ Crowley countered with snark.

‘We definitely not basing our first project off the M25,’ Aziraphale said decisively.

‘Fine, what about the American election?’

‘What about it?’

‘We could I dunno, hack into the system, bring the whole thing crashing down so they can’t tell who won?’

‘How would that help?’ Aziraphale said with wide eyes.

Crowley shrugged, ‘Dunno. Wouldn't hurt. Shake ‘em up a bit.’

Aziraphale frowned, ‘No, Crowley. Absolutely not.’

Crowley sighed. He took another swig of wine. ‘I have it! Banks!’

‘What about them?’

‘Clearly evil. Clear cut evil if ever I saw it. We bring them down somehow…er…not sure on the details but it’d be a classic redistribution of wealth scenario. A Robin Hood type thing. That’s good, isn’t it? Nothing bad about Robin Hood.’

‘Your suggestions involve an awful lot of destruction. Why is that?’ Aziraphale asked with narrowed eyes.

‘Gotta crack a few eggs to make a…whatever it is you make with eggs. Anyway, what are your suggestions?’

‘I’ve already told you,’ Aziraphale answered impatiently, ‘we can simply ask around in town, find someone who needs help and help them.’

‘Argh…’ Crowley groaned dramatically, ‘so boring. Where’s the thrill? The imagination?’

Aziraphale sighed, ‘Maybe Operation Our Side just isn’t going to work as we hoped. Maybe we should go back to work but separately. Still supporting each other, still maintaining the terms of The Arrangement but not actually working together.’

‘Omelette!’

‘What?’

‘That’s what you make with eggs.’

‘Oh, Crowley,’ Aziraphale rolled his eyes.

Crowley pulled Aziraphale into his embrace, kissing his soft white hair, ‘Operation Our Side is going to work, angel. We’ve only decided to begin today and already we have a grand project to work on don’t we? We just need an idea for our first project. Leave it with me. I’ll come up with something. And if I don’t, we will go with your idea. Find someone in town who needs help and go from there.’

Aziraphale smiled and cuddled into Crowley’s chest, ‘Thank-you, dear.’

Crowley held Aziraphale close. They couldn’t return to solo work. The risk of slipping was too high and he was _not_ going to let Aziraphale slip. Crowley would have to come up with something absolutely perfect, the kind of joint project Aziraphale couldn’t say no to. Crowley kissed Aziraphale’s soft white hair. He was happy. Aziraphale was happy. This was too good to lose.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Aziraphale wants to begin Operation Our Side... but what should their first mission be?

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty four days until The Big One**

**A London flat**

Evie sat on her couch, UD glasses on, bent over the augmented reality screen. It was filled with calculations, most in contemporary Arabic notation, others in various forms of ancient notation and even a symbol or two that are simply not of human origin at all. She contemplated the scrawls, ‘We definitely don’t have enough money to get us through, Lil. We are going to need a job next week or we won’t be able to afford food.’

Lil looked up from her own augmented reality screen, ‘Which, I have no doubt, is all part of the plan. Here, I have found where you go to find a job. There are plenty listed. I guess we just start applying?’

Lil flicked the information on her screen sending it to Evie’s. Evie scrolled down frowning, ‘I suppose so. Marketing consultant. Bioinformatician. Data manager. Data specialist. I don’t even know what some of these are.’

Lil shrugged, ‘I guess we stick to jobs we know? Like this one: it seems to mostly involve washing dogs and taking them for walks.’

‘Why?’

‘No idea.’

The girls were startled by Gabriel appearing in the flat, closely followed by Beelzebub.

The leapt to their feet pulling off their glasses and throwing them onto the couch. They quickly bowed, speaking as one, ‘Archangel Gabriel, Lord Beelzebub…’

‘Just thought we’d drop by,’ Gabriel said looking around him, ‘see how you two were getting on. You’ve found yourselves a place to stay I see?’

‘Yes,’ Evie answered stepping up from her bow and standing straight and tall, ‘The person who usually lives here is on holiday in New Zealand. He advertised through a site on the internet, we paid him and now we get to live here while he is away.’

‘With all of his material objects?’ Gabriel asked with a frown.

‘Juszzt ready for you to steal or destroy?’ Beelzebub added looking around at the immaculate flat.

‘Um…yes,’ Evie answered.

‘Humans! They are so stupid!’ Gabriel laughed.

‘Yes, they are, Archangel Gabriel,’ Evie agreed enthusiastically.

‘And we’ve tried food,’ Lil quickly added.

‘Oh?’ Gabriel raised his eyebrows, ‘and how did you find it? The consumption of...’ he scrunched up his nose in disgust, ‘gross matter.’

‘Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting but also… tolerable. We’ve found some foods we can stomach. Chips and fish…’ Lil said.

‘We have tried some fruits too. Oranges and apples. Oh, and strawberries. They are edible. We will be able to survive while we are down here,’ Evie chimed in.

‘Yeah but what happens later, that’s the really gross bit,’ Lil grimaced, her eyes darting to Beelzebub, ‘What was the Almighty even thinking?’

Beelzebub snorted with laughter and Lil couldn’t mask a self-satisfied grin.

‘The human body is riddled with filth. It is stinks, it leaks, it squelches, it bleeds and filth pours out from every orafice,’ Gabriel said with contempt.

Lil and Evie nodded as one their eyes round and serious, ‘Yes, Archangel Gabriel.’

‘Remember, girlszzz it isn’t the eating or even the shitting, as foul as they both are that’ll get you. It is the _hunger_ that will get you. The human body is riddled with desires. And that makes humans easzzy to manipulate. If you are hungry enough you’ll do _anything_. I’ve seen humans sell their children for a bit of bread, I’ve seen them eat shit, I’ve seen them eat the flesh of their own relatives. And that is just hunger. Humanity is a mess of filthy deszzzireszzzz.’

‘Yes, Lord Beelezebub,’ Evie and Lil chanted.

‘That said,’ Gabriel interjected, ‘for now, as distasteful as it all is, you are to try it all. Bathe in the filth of it, give in to your greedy human desires so you can see how weak and vulnerable they make you. Learn for yourselves that what we have taught you is true. Forty days and forty nights living as ordinary human beings do. Then you will know your purpose.'

'Yes, Archangel Gabriel, thank you Archangel Gabriel,’ Evie and Lil chanted eyes looking down.

‘We won’t disappoint you,’ Evie added with a whisper.

‘No, you won’t,’ Gabriel replied with menace and barely concealed threat. A moment later his face transformed into a wide, happy smile, ‘well, girls, we will see you again in, oh, another thirty-eight days.’

‘And our powers will be restored then?’ Lil said, immediately regretting it and biting her tongue. Gabriel didn’t like questions.

But Gabriel smiled, ‘Of course. And we will all get to see what you do with them, won’t we?’

‘Yeszzz we will,’ Beelezebub added with a knowing smirk.

And with that they both disappeared.

Evie collapsed onto the couch shaking, ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. What if we fuck this up? What if we start rolling in the filth of the world and we can’t stop? What if we can’t figure out how to fix the world? What if we fail?’ she hugged herself in an attempt to still the trembling.

Lil ran to the sink and dry heaved. She took several deep steadying breaths before she stumbled over to Evie, ‘it’ll be okay, Evie,’ she whispered, patting Evie’s leg.

‘How?’ Evie whispered, tears welling in her eyes, ‘I don’t know how to fix the world. You don’t know…’

Lil turned to Evie and her face twisted into a determined grin, ‘We are going to roll in the filth of the world. We are going to learn how it works. And when we’ve passed this test and have our powers back we are going to take the world apart piece by piece and make it right. We are going to make them so proud, Evie.’

‘Yes,’ Evie nodded, gulping back her fear, ‘yes, the world will quake before our holy righteousness, we will fix the world and put it right. We will re-make it as the Almighty intended…’

Lil nodded her dark eyes twinkling, ‘the world had better be prepared for what’s coming….’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty four days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Crowley weeded the garden painstakingly by hand. He could, of course, just miracle the weeds away. But somehow it was more satisfying to dig his hands into the earth and tear the little buggers up himself. Besides, he needed some thinking time. He was almost on the edge of an idea. He could feel it. And if the first assignment was to have any of the panache that Crowley wanted it to, if it was going to be the perfect mission that ensured Aziraphale would never slip again, he would need to close in and seize it.

A contact from the past kept appearing in Crowley’s mind: Professor Rob Hawkins. Strange character, Rob. A floundering academic in English literature, he modelled himself on Moriarty, the arch-enemy of Sherlock Holmes and went into crime. Of course, he wasn’t half as smart as Moriarty in Crowley’s opinion—not that Crowley had ever read the Sherlock Holmes stories and he certainly had not subscribed to The Strand, waiting for every instalment with bated breath—in fact, Rob was a bit of a tosser. One of those people who likes to appear much much smarter than he is. Had a tendency to drop literary quotes into the conversation, often in such a way that betrayed his lack of genuine understanding for the source material. Wait—why did that seem important? Crowley pulled another weed and let his mind lazily circle it. Nah—not quite. Crowley recalled the last time he’d seen Rob. Rob had been his typical self dropping Shakespeare quotes everywhere and claiming he had something magnificent planned. Turned up dead a week later. When was that? It was during the period when Crowley was playing Nanny Ashtoreth to the Warlock kid, that’s right. Damn—what was it?

Crowley pulled up the very last weed and looked around himself satisfied. He miracled the pile of weeds into oblivion, he’d allow himself that. Just then Aziraphale, with timing that was suspiciously miraculous, appeared in the garden with a picnic basket.

‘Oh I see you’ve finished the weeding, dear,’ Aziraphale said with a smile, ‘How about a spot of lunch?’

Crowley snorted, ‘What did you make a little bell ring upstairs when I was done again?’

‘I’m quite sure I don’t know what you mean,’ Aziraphale replied indignantly.

Crowley laughed. He didn’t mind. It was good to know, actually, the lengths Aziraphale went to in order to maximise their time together. And if he was honest he had been known to use similar miracles to keep track of Aziraphale. In fact, he’d been using tracking miracles on Aziraphale for quite some time. For his own protection, of course.

Crowley clicked his fingers, miracling his gardening tools and apron back into the shed. He clicked his fingers again and he was instantly clean and immaculately groomed, ‘The bench by the lavender or a blanket under the apple tree?’

‘Oh I think the blanket for a picnic lunch, don’t you?’

‘Whatever you fancy, angel.’

Aziraphale miracled up a large picnic blanket in his own personal tartan and they both sat down, Aziraphale sitting carefully and primly, fussing about unpacking the lunch and Crowley lying down on the blanket and sprawling out fully.

‘Glad I planted this,’ Crowley said, looking up at the branches swaying in the breeze, heavy with ripe red fruit, ‘it is looking good now.’

‘Hmm… oh yes, quite. And such lovely associations,’ Aziraphale said with a shy smile, ‘our first meeting.’

‘That was the general idea,’ Crowley replied with a smirk.

‘I should guard it, for old times sake,’ Aziraphale said with a little wiggle as he pulled plates of sandwiches, scotch eggs, pork pies, cold chicken, and strawberries and cream out of the basket.

‘Ha! Couldn’t do it then can’t do it now,’ Crowley replied with a smirk as he reached for an egg sandwich.

‘Well you always were a wily adversary,’ Aziraphale said with a smile, ‘anyway, I think I’ve quite given up guarding against your wiles, don’t you?’

‘Don’t need my wiles with you, angel. Not anymore,’ Crowley replied, smiling with lazy happiness.

Aziraphale was soon quite occupied with his lunch and they sat together in contented silence, Crowley alternating between watching Aziraphale’s bliss as he ate, and watching the tree branches above him swaying in the breeze. Every so often he’d take a sandwich or a strawberry for himself. He was aware that, in the background, his mind was still lazily circling Hawkins, zoning in on that final meeting. He let it do its thing. It’d come to him eventually.

Aziraphale poured them both some tea from his picnic flask. He could tell that Crowley was puzzling something out in the background. Best to let him get on with it.

‘Oh!’ Crowley shouted, ‘Love’s Labour’s Won.’

‘Oh yes, one of your favourites, wasn’t it, dear?’ Aziraphale said with a sad shake of his head, ‘Such a shame it was lost.’

‘Yes, yes always preferred the funny ones, but the point is he was quoting it, angel!’

‘Who?’

‘Hawkins!’

‘Well, it was quite popular in its day. One of Shakespeare's finest,’ Aziraphale said with a frown trying to follow Crowley’s train of thought.

‘No, no! He was quoting it like thirty something years ago! Oh, he might have quoted other lost plays too. Not sure ‘bout that,’ Crowley screwed up his face in thought, ‘but he definitely quoted Love’s Labour’s Won. I recognised the reference at the time I just didn’t think, I didn’t make the connection: it is one of the lost plays yet there’s Hawkins quoting it!’

Aziraphale’s face lit up, ‘Oh, Crowley! He must have found it! That’s wonderful. Wait, who is Hawkins?’

Crowley waved his arms around, ‘Oh, he was just one of my human contacts. Literary nerd. Fancied himself as a bit of a Moriarty. Too stupid to be a criminal mastermind, though.’

‘What’s he done with it then? I’d have heard if it was discovered,’ Aziraphale said a little crease marking his forehead.

‘Didn’t get to do anything with it,’ Crowley laughed, ‘One of his schemes caught up with him. He’s been,’ Crowley whispered the next bit while pointing downwards dramatically, ‘down there for, well, thirty something years.’

‘What happened to it then?’ Aziraphale said wringing his hands.

‘Well, it can’t have ever been recognised for what it is, could it? Or it wouldn’t still be lost,’ Crowley cast his memory back and recalled a sharp-witted daughter, a girl quite unlike her father and yet very much loved. What was her name? ‘Lucy!’

‘Sorry?’

‘S with Lucy Hawkins. His daughter. She was to inherit everything. But she was still a kid when he died. Well, I say kid. More a teenager. It would have all been put into trust or something.’

‘Or lost or sold or stolen. Bilton and Scaggs found The Comedies of Robin Hoode. But they lost it. Lost it!’ Aziraphale said with a sigh and a sad shake of his head.

‘I told you to take it! Shoulda listened.’

Aziraphale sighed, ‘Perhaps.’

Crowley shrugged. He clicked his fingers and miracled the screen for his universal device from inside the cottage into his hands. He unfolded it and searched the web furiously, ‘Found her. Ha! Well, that is ironic!’

‘What is?’

‘She’s a mathematician. Got a position at Oxford.’

Aziraphale laughed, ‘Oh a mathematician just like Moritary. Well, her father’s love of the character manifested for her in some way then,’ he abruptly stopped laughing, as he realised something. With a sideways glance and a knowing grin he asked, ‘Wait…how do _you_ know so much about Moritary? I thought you didn’t read books.’

Crowley took another strawberry without looking away from his screen, a little pink dusting his cheeks, ‘Adaptations. Movies. Shows.’

‘Of course,’ Aziraphale replied with a nod and a barely repressed chuckle. He had always suspected and Sherlock Holmes would be exactly the kind of thing that Crowley would read. But he didn’t push it. He allowed Crowley his discretions.

Aziraphale’s grin faded and a worried frown twisted his features instead, ‘you don’t think she’s taken on the whole criminal mastermind aspect of Moritary, do you? Like her father I mean but actually intelligent?’ 

Crowley shook his head emphatically, ‘There’s no way, angel. Not the kid I knew.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Angel, I know how to do my job. Some people are just a write-off temptation wise and she was one of them.’

‘Former job.’

Crowley shrugged and made an indecipherable sound of acknowledgement.

‘There’s a phone number listed for her, here we go,’ Crowley said. He miracled his ear piece into his hand and slipped it into place, clicking on the number. 

Aziraphale sipped his tea as he listened to Crowley’s side of the conversation. Every word dripped with demonic power.

‘No, no not that Anthony Crowley. I’m his son,’ Crowley said. There was a long pause and a friendly laugh, ‘well, no I don’t expect you’d have remembered the lanky son of one of your dad’s business associates. I remember you, but I have the advantage in that you were so very pretty. Oh, I suppose I shouldn’t have said that,’ Crowley laughed flirtatiously, his voice lush with temptation.

Aziraphale had to swallow a chuckle. He of all people knew that Crowley’s ability to speak with a silver tongue actually broke down the more genuine and intense his feeling. The greatest compliment he could give was incomprehensible spluttering.

‘Look the reason for my call,’ Crowley went on, ‘S my father recently passed away,’ there was another long pause, ‘that’s good of you, thank you. The thing is, I’ve discovered, while sorting through his belongings that he was involved in, well, how can I put this? Some less desirable activities,’ another long pause, ‘Oh I see. I’m relieved in a way to know I’m not the only one,’ another long pause, ‘I wonder, could I meet up with you sometime? It is all quite a shock and I was hoping,’ another pause, ‘oh, you are too kind. You really are,’ pause, ‘oh, I’ll come to you. Tomorrow it is. See you soon.’

Crowley hung up the phone call, putting the ear piece and screen to one side. He grinned at Aziraphale, ‘Her father’s belongings are all in storage.’

‘And you think the lost quartos may be there too?’

‘Ah-ha,’ Crowley said with a nod. He lay back down stretching out on the picnic blanket, his mind already a whirl of ideas: how to tempt Lucy into handing over the quartos, how to reveal them to the world, how to ensure Aziraphale didn’t squirrel them away for his own personal collection. ‘Pretty good for a first project, don’t you think? Recovering some of the Bard’s lost work?’

Aziraphale sighed, ‘Yes, dear. It is absolutely perfect.’ As Aziraphale climbed on top of Crowley, pressing warm, deep kisses onto his skin, licking long wet lines along his neck, and allowing the edges of himself to blur just a little—all that space between electrons— so that they intermingled at their boundaries in a most delicious way, Crowley made all manner of incomprehensible noises and found he quite lost his train of thought.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation.
> 
> Aziraphale was to begin Operation Our Side. Crowley remembered that an old contact of his had lost Shakespearean plays and his daughter Lucy must have inherited them.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty two days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale paced nervously as he waited for Crowley. He’d been gone all day. The sun had long since set. Aziraphale had read two books and finished an entire packet of shortbread since he had left. As he paced, he hoped that something hasn’t happened to Crowley. But, surely not?

Just when Aziraphale was considering phoning him, he saw the headlights of the Bentley out the window and heard it roar up the drive.

He leapt away from the window, and sat as nonchalantly as possible on the couch, book in hand.

Crowley strode in carrying a box. ‘Hey, angel,’ he smiled, ‘reading your book collection upside down now, are you?’

‘I was just…’ Aziraphale’s face reddened slightly and he hurriedly put the book back down, never completing his sentence, ‘is that them? The lost quartos?’

‘Aha,’ Crowley grinned, ‘well, I say it’s them. I don’t really know, do I? I’ve done my bit, it is time to do yours.’

But Aziraphale was already reaching gingerly into the box and miracling his glasses onto his face.

‘Do I get a kiss for my troubles?’ Crowley asked with a pout but Aziraphale was already absorbed in his task, carefully reaching in the box for quarto after quarto, putting them into little piles for closer examination.

Crowley sighed, ‘or a thank-you?’

That broke through, ‘oh yes thank you, dear,’ Aziraphale mumbled without looking up, his attention once again fully on the box and its contents.

‘Right. Yeah. Tell you how I accomplished it later I suppose? Let you get on with,’ Crowley’s preformed a complicated gesture with his hand that looked nothing like carefully retrieving quartos from a box, ‘yeah. Ha. Ngh.’

Crowley stomped into the lounge room and flopped dramatically on the couch. He turned the television on flicking through the channels but finding nothing good. Far too much reality TV for his liking. Of course, Crowley had been partly responsible for reality TV. Received a commendation for it too. But that only made it more annoying. He had never expected it to be so big for so long. Who could have seen that coming? Humans were usually so reliably creative. Cruel sometimes. Horrifying sometimes. But _creative_. They simply shouldn’t tolerate it. He’d have never gone through with the idea if he had thought they’d still be blaring the shit out now.

Crowley found an old Golden Girls episode to watch. One episode became two, and then three. Aziraphale was well settled into actually reading the quartos by now and Crowley closed his eyes, curled up on the couch and began to doze.

By the time Crowley had woken up it was mid-morning and Aziraphale had finished studying the quartos. He was pouring a cup of tea from a china teapot and smiling to himself, ‘Oh, you are awake, dear? Want a cup?’

‘Nagh,’ Crowley mumbled.

‘Of course, after such a long sleep you’ll be wanting an expresso,’ he clicked his fingers and the coffee machine in the kitchen sparked to life, pouring a perfect Italian expresso. Crowley stumbled out into the kitchen, returning to sit next to Aziraphale expresso in hand. Aziraphale was happily munching on a custard cream. He brushed the crumbs away and took a sip of tea.

‘Well,’ Aziraphale announced, eyes bright and wide, ‘we have no less than six lost quartos! Six, Crowley! Oh and one of them is The Comedies of Robin Hoode! Isn’t that amusing?’ he wiggled in his seat barely able to contain his excitement, ‘see there it came to me eventually…there’s also a Dekker and a Dekker and Ford collaboration. Obviously, they are not quite as exciting but they will still be received with great interest.’

Crowley grinned at Aziraphale’s child-like delight and sipped his expresso, ‘S good to see you so happy, angel.’

‘Oh, it is perfect! Can you imagine the flurry of excitement this will generate! There will be performances of these plays for the first time in over four hundred years.’

‘Hm,’ Crowley downed the remainder of his expresso, ‘not tempted to simply add them to your private collection then? I’m sure there’s space for them in between the misprinted Bibles and the books of prophesy.’

Aziraphale was decidedly ruffled at this, ‘Of course not. Plays are meant to be performed, they’ll never be performed again if they are sitting on my bookshelf.’

‘And you wouldn’t be able to see the plays performed again.’

‘Exactly,’ Aziraphale beamed.

Crowley snorted, ‘So, it isn’t all about the common good then? Rather, you, Aziraphale would rather see the plays performed than have the quartos in your little collection.’

Aziraphale fidgeted in his seat, ‘well, of course, that’s the main reason: the common good. That goes without saying.’

‘Of course,’ Crowley smirked, waving his hand.

Aziraphale made a point of ignoring him, ‘I expect you to take me to see the first productions, Crowley.’

‘As long as there aren’t any gloomy ones in there. You know I’ve always hated the gloomy ones.’

‘Well, maybe one or two.’

Crowley groaned dramatically, ‘Let’s burn the gloomy ones. For the common good.’

‘Crowley! How could you even…’ Aziraphale answered scandalised.

‘S alright, angel. I know you aren’t going to let me burn them. More’s the pity. It really would be for the common good.’

Aziraphale took another sip of tea, ‘Crowley, we aren’t stealing are we? From Lucy, I mean? She wanted the plays to be released? I mean, she could sell them for a substantial amount of money.’

‘Her father stole them. I’ve no doubt about that. She doesn’t know what they are, didn’t even see me take them. But I gave her everything she wanted in return. Not that she knows it was me, apart from the helping her clear out her father’s belongings bit. But that makes it all good, doesn’t it?’

Aziraphale considered this and nodded, ‘and what did she want?’

‘To finally deal with her father’s belongings,’ Crowley answered counting Lucy’s wishes off on his fingers, ‘financial security, for her eldest to get a break in her music career, for her youngest to meet someone nice and for her ex-husband to become impotent.’

Aziraphale’s nose scrunched up in distaste, ‘you didn’t actually do the last one, did you?’

‘He was a right scoundrel! Cheated on her many times, angel. This is while she’s sacrificing her career to follow him around the world, chasing every little opportunity his mediocre talents could produce. And he was a hopeless father by all accounts. Serves him right. Anyway ‘s only temporary. He will find himself quite cured if he ever learns to actually treat a partner well.’

Aziraphale nodded as if that was quite alright then. ‘Well, all that remains to be done is to deliver the goods as it were. I’ve found the perfect person to deliver them to: a wonderful up and coming Shakespearean scholar: Dr Emily Barrett. Also at Oxford, as it so happens. She will absolutely treasure them and ensure they are shared with the world. And she’s such a delightful, good person. Just the right person to give a lucky break to.’

‘And I suppose you are planning on appearing in all your glory “behold I am an angel of the Lord sent to deliver lost Shakespearean plays to you.”’

Azairaphale shifted in his seat, ‘I considered it. But that hasn’t worked terribly well for a number of centuries. I was thinking more along the lines of “oh hello I am Mr Fell a rare book dealer and I’ve found something you might be interested in.”’

‘Then it connects back to you and your shop! I mean I know that nowadays you only open the bookshop on Thursday afternoons and alternate Saturdays in the morning and the first Monday of every month at tea time and occasionally when we happen to be in London anyway but no… that ‘s a terrible idea!’

Aziraphale shrugged, ‘do you have any better ideas?’

Crowley grinned and raised his eyebrows meaningfully, ‘as it so happens I do.’ He took a custard cream off Aziraphale’s plate and bit it.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty two days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie and Lil pressed the augmented reality button sending yet another job application out into the ether. They had no idea which of the many jobs advertised they’d like, which they’d be able to do, or even which they’d be likely to get. They didn’t even fully grasp on what basis to make a choice (when it came to finding the flat there was only one flat available immediately and for the next forty nights so they had been spared that particular challenge). They agreed that the best strategy was to apply for anything that they vaguely understood and see what happened.

Evie had figured out what a resume was supposed to look like and Lil had gotten creative about what exactly they could say on theirs and well, they had spread it around liberally.

‘That’s it,’ Lil said pulling off her UD glasses and collapsing onto the couch, ‘I’ve had enough.’

‘Me too,’ Evie agreed with a yawn as she flicked off her own glasses, ‘why do I feel so awful?’

‘Probably need more sleep,’ Lil replied with a yawn of her own.

‘Again? We just slept last night. This is so tedious. I never expected this to be so damn boring. Everyone mentioned the filth and the sin and the death. No one mentioned the boredom.’

Lil frowned, ‘yeah they skipped that bit. I suppose none of them ever stayed here long enough to get bored. We probably need food too. Aw, I think I do anyway. It feels like there’s a gnawing hole right here,’ she said pointing to her stomach.

‘Ugh… me too,’ Evie agreed walking to the kitchen. She gathered up all the food she could find—a tub of Greek yogurt, an apple, a packet of crisps and a jar of marmalade— and brought it into the living room, sitting the strange feast on the coffee table. She ducked back for two spoons and by the time she had returned Lil had turned on the TV and was dunking crisps into the marmalade.

‘Cheers, Evie,’ she said taking one of the spoons and using it to eat more marmalade.

Evie helped herself to the apple.

Lil had unfolded her screen to full capacity and used it to watch television. It blared out some ridiculous reality TV show where celebrities competed in a medieval tournament for the opportunity to marry the princess of somewhere-or-other.

‘This is ridiculous. Even I know this isn’t how marriage works nowadays,’ Evie said munching on her apple.

‘I dunno why they’re all so keen for her hand anyway. Looks right stuck up,’ Lil answered.

‘She’s very pretty, though,’ Evie replied, her head tilting as she considered it.

Lil turned immediately to Evie and gave her an evaluating look.

Evie shrugged, hugging a cushion as she felt a warm sensation spreading across her cheeks, ‘well, she _is_.’

Lil turned back to her marmalade, and looking very closely at it, she asked quietly, ‘Do you think we should try that at some point? Obviously not together…but, you know… _that_ …’

‘I suppose. Should read up on it at least,’ Evie answered, carefully keeping her gaze on the screen, ‘I’m not sure rolling in the filth of the world is quite complete without _that_ … they probably expect it of us…’

‘Huh.’

A silence descended and lasted for several minutes before Lil jumped back in, ‘well, the show is rubbish anyway. You know the traitor—the demon one— played a huge role in the development of television shows, especially reality TV and game shows.’

‘How did you know that?’ Evie asked, turning to her. They knew very little about the traitors.

‘Overheard Hastur talking about it once.’

Evie took a crisp and munched on it, ‘I wonder what they are like.’

Lil shrugged, ‘Dunno. Traitors. Weird probably. I’m changing the channel.’

They channel surfed for awhile before finding another reality show. A painfully extroverted host with ridiculous make up set the contestants cooking tasks and swanned around the kitchen mocking them. They stayed on that one awhile. It was still rubbish but at least the cooking was interesting.

‘Maybe we should try cooking,’ Evie said, admiring one contestant’s caramel cheesecake. Evie had no idea what caramel was but it looked like it might taste nice. Interesting. It seemed she was acquiring a taste for food. So soon?

‘Sure. Why not? We need to buy more food tomorrow at least. We can get something we can, you know, cook,’ Lil replied. She yawned again, ‘I feel like my body is rotting from the inside out. It feels bloody awful.’

Evie yawned too. ‘Yeah. I don’t think I can keep my eyes open anymore. I’m off to bed.’

Lil flicked the TV off and they parted ways, Lil to the main bedroom and Evie to the spare bedroom. It didn’t take long before they were both sound asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. 
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale have begun Operation Our Side. Their first joint mission is to secure Shakespeare's lost quartos and release them to the world. They have the quartos and plan to release them by giving them to Shakespearean scholar Emily Barrett.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty one days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie woke in the early hours of the morning, her heart thumping in her chest. Her mind swum with ridiculous images: she saw herself winning the jousting contest, winning the hand of the princess of somewhere-or-other, marrying the pretty princess, leaning forward for a kiss… a dream! She’d had a dream! She must ask Lil if she’d had a dream yet.

But right now, dammit, she needed to go to the bathroom. Tedious. So tedious these beastly human bodies. She crept out to the bathroom and back careful not to wake her sister. She returned to her bed and it took her ages to fall back asleep. She was still exhausted. So tired. Yet she couldn’t sleep. She closed her eyes and…nothing. What kind of ridiculous design flaw was this? Evie resolved to ask Lil about this one too. She wondered if it had something to do with the dreaming thing. Finally, she fell into an exhausted slumber, waking to sounds of television in the living room in the morning.

She stumbled out yawning, ‘I’m still tired. Why I am still tried?’

Lil looked up from the couch, ‘all we have left is a few crisps. Wanna go to the shops soon?’

Evie nodded and yawned again, ‘We should buy some ingredients too. So we can, you know, try cooking.’

‘Aha.’

‘Have you had trouble going to sleep?’ Evie asked.

‘Watcha mean?’

‘Like you are tired and you want to sleep but you can’t,’ Evie explained.

‘No,’ Lil said, ‘let me look it up,’ she slipped on her glasses for her UD and a bit of googling later she slipped them off again, ‘it is normal for that to happen sometimes. If it happens a lot it is called insomnia.’

‘Well, it is awful,’ Evie said, ‘wait until it happens to you. Quite the design flaw if you ask me.’

Lil snorted, ‘riddled with design flaws these humans are.’

‘Oh and I had a dream last night!’

‘They are nice, aren’t they?’ Lil answered with a reflective smile, ‘I like dreams. Wait, haven’t you been getting those?’

‘No or I haven’t been remembering them anyway,’ Evie replied helping herself to a crisp.

‘Well, I’ve been dreaming about all kinds of things. Can’t remember it all clearly when I wake but I’ve been dreaming about eating, driving a car, getting our powers back, oh and punching Archangel Gabriel. That was a weird one!’

Evie shivered, ‘don’t even say that.’

Lil shrugged, ‘from what I can see dreams are meant to be weird. What did you dream about?’

Evie looked away, ‘Nothing much. Just that show we watched yesterday.’

Lil smirked.

Evie felt a sharp stab of shame as she remembered that she had dreamed of kissing the princess. Shit. Was she becoming corrupted already? So easily? First developing a taste for food and now this?

‘Shops?’ Evie asked changing the subject before Lil could dig any deeper.

‘Shops,’ Lil replied, ‘but I’ve been doing some research. I think we gotta wash first with um... soap. We are both starting to stink. You noticed that?’

Evie’s nose wrinkled, ‘I did notice a smell.’

‘You know the shower we tried out? We should be doing it everyday from what I can find out and with soap. There is some soap in the bathroom cupboards. I say we use some of it this morning and replace it.’

Evie nodded.

‘And we should buy shampoo when we are out too for our hair. And maybe deodorant. Oh and more clothes. And soap to wash our clothes.’

‘Whatever you say. At least the showering felt nice,’ Evie said.

‘Hm. I found it a bit freaky. But I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Better than stinking.’

Evie just laughed. Ridiculous human bodies. 

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty one days until The Big One**

**University of Oxford**

‘It’d be so much easier if I just approached her and handed the lost quartos over,’ Aziraphale whispered, peaking at Emily through the foliage.

Crowley pursed his ruby red lips together. He made a point of ignoring Aziraphale and instead focused his attention on smoothing out his long, dark skirt.

‘That’s the target?’ Crowley whispered as Emily moved out of the coffee shop—a quaint little coffee shop on the Oxford campus, mostly frequented, naturally, by students and staff—to one of the tables in the al fresco area, ‘in the blue top?’

‘That’s Emily Barrett, yes, dear,’ Aziraphale replied, stepping out from the tree they were both hiding behind to point, ‘second table from the left.’

Crowley pulled him back behind the tree hissing, ‘Angel, you’ll blow our cover.’

Aziraphale tutted, ‘you can just miracle it so no one notices us. I could just hand the quartos over. There’s no need for any of this.’

‘S not as fun,’ Crowley whispered then immediately regretted it.

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale’s eyes widened, delight dancing inside their blue depths.

‘No,’ Crowley answered, anticipating what Aziraphale was about to say.

‘It is.’

‘It isn’t.’

‘But it _is_ ,’ Aziraphale insisted, ‘this is your version of my magic act!’

‘Ssss nothing like it!’ Crowley hissed.

‘Oh. I understand now, dear,’ Aziraphale said with a wide knowing grin and a little wink.

‘Shut up.’

Aziraphale just smiled.

Crowley returned to gazing at Emily, peaking through the leaves. He whispered, ‘Confirmation of target.’

‘Do we have to call her the target though, dear? It is so dehumanising. Can’t we just call her Emily? That is her name after all.’

‘She’ssss the target,’ Crowley hissed.

‘Alright, alright, no need to be like that,’ Aziraphale replied fussing with his jacket and rolling his eyes.

‘Getting a visual on the target’s handbag,’ Crowley whispered, ‘confirmed as a black Gucci.’

‘Who are you confirming it with? Me?’ Aziraphale asked, a frown of confusion creasing his forehead.

Crowley didn’t answer. He was busy miracling the handbag he was carrying—a handbag that contained the lost quartos— to resemble Emily’s handbag or rather, as Crowley thought of it, the _target’s_ handbag. With another miracle, he transferred the target’s belongings from her bag to his.

‘m making the switch,’ Crowley whispered, ‘you stay here.’

Crowley sauntered into the coffee shop and ordered an expresso from the computerised ordering system for appearances sake. Little buzzer in hand (the buzzer would let him know when his expresso was ready, but again, he only took it for appearances sake) he nonchalantly slipped into a chair at the table immediately next to where Emily Barrett was sitting. He placed his black Gucci bag on the floor next to hers. Emily smiled at him briefly and continued to sip her tea. Crowley began to carefully nudge his bag closer to Emily’s, slowly, slowly, making the swap. He’d nearly gotten halfway—both bags were in between the two tables—when Emily disrupted the swap by bending down and reaching for her bag. 

‘Oh no, dear, that’s my bag,’ Crowley said, quickly clutching at the handle of Emily’s bag.

Emily smiled, ‘No, no, I’m quite sure. That’s mine.’

‘But we have the same bag. Easy mistake to make. This one is yours.’

Emily frowned at the peculiar stranger but she held firm, ‘Exactly. Same bag so it is understandable that _you’ve_ made a mistake. But mine has a little mark on the handle, do you see? I’ve an eye for details like that.’

Crowley clutched hard at Emily’s handbag. Emily clutched just as hard. What could he do? Intimidate her? Flirt with her? Snap his fingers and make her go all compliant?

Just as Crowley was really beginning to panic, Aziraphale resolved the escalating tension by rushing out of the foliage, ‘Oh my! Look at that!’ Aziraphale shouted as he pointed dramatically at the sky, ‘what a remarkable apparition! Such a wonder to behold! And verily even as I speak it is resolving into a form even more wondrous and astounding!’

Everyone in the coffee shop, including Emily, immediately turned to look at the sky behind them.

While Emily was distracted, her grip on her handbag loosened and Crowley quickly made the switch, miracling the mark onto his handbag, and putting it directly under Emily’s hand. Switch accomplished. Crowley breathed a sigh of relief.

‘What?’ a young theology student asked as he stirred his cappuccino and frowned at the perfectly normal sky, ‘the cloud?’

‘Why yes,’ Aziraphale replied, ‘It looks just like a seahorse, don’t you think?’

The theology student’s frown deepened as he stared at a perfectly ordinary large puffy cloud. He tried desperately to see it. Eventually he shrugged, ‘Nothing like it.’

‘Oh, perhaps not,’ Aziraphale smiled.

Emily shook her head as her train of thought returned to her bag. She checked she had the correct bag, the one with the mark on the handle, and gripped onto it firmly, eyeing Crowley suspiciously.

‘You were right. That’s your bag,’ Crowley said with a little grin, ‘Anyway, best be off. Want a free expresso?’

Crowley threw his buzzer onto Emily’s table and strode off, handbag in hand.

‘What?’ Emily said with a confused frown, ‘But why did you…’

‘Wait!’ Aziraphale interrupted, striding forward with a gleam in his eye as he plucked a gold coin from behind Emily’s ear ‘what’s this?’ Aziraphale’s mouth opened into a wide O of dramatic surprise, delight dancing in his eyes. He placed the coin on the table. Emily stared down at it.

‘Is this some kind of promotion? Or a reality show or something?’ the theology student jumped in.

‘Oh no, nothing like that, dear fellow, it’s just…well…’ Aziraphale plucked another gold coin from behind the theology student’s ear, ‘magic.’

Aziraphale gave a little bow and left, hurrying away after Crowley.

Emily watched him go in utter confusion. She shook her head, ‘some strange people around today.’

The theology student laughed and sipped his cappuccino, ‘I’ll say.’ He fingered the gold coin and quickly decided to keep it as a souvenir. He couldn’t say why and he certainly never suspected that he had had an encounter with an angel. But somehow the coin seemed important.

Emily reached into her bag to retrieve her foldable screen. As she reached in her fingers brushed against paper. Paper? She pulled her bag up onto her lap and looked inside. She couldn’t believe her eyes. She snapped her bag shut and rushed back to her office, quickly flicking off the necessary texts to cancel every outstanding meeting. By the time she was sitting at her desk—heart in her throat—examining at the lost quartos, a certain angel and demon were speeding off in the demon’s Bentley. 

‘A seahorse, really?’ Crowley said, taking his eyes off the road to look at Aziraphale pointedly, ‘and you had to bring your magic act into it of course?’

‘Well, it worked, didn’t it?’ Aziraphale countered.

Crowley sighed still staring at Aziraphale. He couldn’t exactly argue with that. He turned back to the road and focussed on driving. A minute or two later he decided he could argue with that after all. He turned back to Aziraphale, ‘Couldn’t you have miracled up a genuine apparition of some kind? Done some actual magic?’

‘Wasn’t avoiding miracles part of the fun, dear?’

Crowley’s eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses, still focused on Aziraphale.

‘The road, Crowley!’

Crowley’s gaze returned to the road and he quickly swerved around the corner.

Aziraphale’s hand fluttered over his heart, ‘perhaps a little slower, dear.’

Crowley groaned at this but he did slow down a dash.

Aziraphale relaxed, looking at the rapidly moving countryside out the window. Eventually, he turned to Crowley and, smiling fondly, said, ‘you know, I quite like this working together thing. I’m getting to know you on a whole new level, aren’t I? It is quite a revelation.’

‘Shuddup, angel,’ Crowley replied. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation.
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale have begun Operation Our Side. They have successfully given the lost quartos to Shakespearean scholar Emily Barrett.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie and Lil stared at their creation in disbelief. It sat on a white platter on the stone bench top in utter contempt, almost as if it was staring back.

‘What was it meant to look like, again?’ Evie asked, chewing at her bottom lip.

Lil passed over her UD glasses and Evie put them on, comparing the AR caramel cheesecake from the recipe to the real caramel cheesecake on their kitchen bench, ‘Why’s ours so flat?’

Lil frowned, ‘It isn’t so much the height I’m worried about as the slope. I don’t think it should be a hill.’

‘Hm…’ Evie agreed, ‘And why’s it got all these black patches?’

‘Ah, well I reckon we burned it a bit.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Bit disappointing, huh, Evie?’ Lil said with a sigh.

‘I didn’t realise it’d be so hard,’ Evie replied, twirling a strand of dark hair around her finger, ‘Looked easy enough on that show.’

‘Yeah, well, clearly it is hard. Everything here is harder than it looks. We need to start with something easier,’ Lil said. She sighed, ‘should we taste this first?’

‘Sure,’ Evie said with a shrug, ‘why not?’ she dug around in the kitchen drawers and found forks for them both.

Evie handed a fork to Lil and they both scooped some cheesecake directly off the platter in front of them. They tasted in silent contemplation.

‘You know, it doesn’t taste quite as bad as it looks. Well, apart from the burnt bits, they’re pretty awful,’ Evie said, taking a second big forkful into her mouth.

‘Yeah, I agree. Maybe we weren’t too far off after all.’

They both continued eating, avoiding the burnt top, scooping out the soft and well-cooked middle and the crumbly biscuit-like base. The cheesecake was sweet, sticky, and deeply satisfying.

‘You know,’ Lil said after downing another mouthful, ‘I can’t quite see what’s so bad about eating. It seems kinda harmless. Who exactly are we hurting by eating this?’

‘It must be bad,’ Evie said with a frown, ‘or the Archangels wouldn’t have warned us against it. None of them eat gross matter.’

Lil gave this some consideration as she licked her fork, ‘I dunno. You heard what Lord Beelzebub said. It isn’t the eating, it is the _hunger_.’

‘The hunger?’ Evie said softly, stabbing the cheesecake with her fork, as a dark flare of shame twisted her guts, ‘It isn’t the cheesecake it is our desire for the cheesecake that’s the problem.’

Lil nodded as she licked the caramel off her spoon, ‘Hm… our hunger for more…’

‘It isn’t just hunger… it is all of the human desires…’ Evie said in a soft whisper, nibbling at her bottom lip, shame pressing down on her. The sheer physicality of her current existence was overwhelming. Her body was, already, proving to be demanding, relentless and oh, so shameful.

Lil looked across to Evie tenderly, ‘it’s alright, Evie. We are meant to roll in the filth of the world, remember? How can we figure out what went wrong otherwise? While we are here we are meant to sin. It isn’t your fault.’

Evie started to tremble, the fork shaking slightly in the cheesecake, giving her away. She dropped it to the bench with a loud clink. ‘What if I’m not strong enough though? What if I can’t stop? What if I can’t control it?’

‘You _are_ , Evie. You are,’ Lil smiled her dark eyes twinkling with love for her sister. She wrapped her arms around her and held her tight, ‘I think we are meant to lose ourselves in it all for now. It is okay. I believe in you. We’ll be able to stop when it’s time. We’ll find the solution.’

Evie took a few deep breaths and stilled, ‘you’re right. You’re right. I’ll be able to master it. We need to taste sin to understand it. You are right.’

Lil smiled, ‘Anyway, right now we are going to find something easier to cook and we are going to master it.’ Lil let Evie go and picked up her UD glasses and did some googling, looking for easy recipes, ‘Aha. Here’s something easier to start with.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Pancakes.’

‘And we have all the ingredients?’ Evie asked.

‘Yep. Every last one.’

‘Alright,’ Evie said, putting the cheesecake into the fridge for later and dropping the dirty forks into the sink, ‘What’s the first step, then?’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Forty days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale and Crowley agreed that their very first truly joint endeavour—the first project of Operation Our Side—could not be declared complete, and hence not celebrated, until its success was confirmed. They waited nervously in the cottage—a celebratory meal miraculously preserved on the kitchen bench, champagne in the fridge and television on a low volume and tuned to a news channel—waiting for the news to break. The sun was had already set. It was getting late. If the news didn’t break soon, it wouldn’t be breaking today.

Crowley unfolded his screen and did a quick google search to confirm that the news hadn’t broken yet.

‘Nothing yet, angel.’

Aziraphale paced, wringing his hands, ‘I would have thought an announcement of some kind would be made today. She had all of yesterday with them and now all of today. I mean I know she’ll want to do scientific tests on the quartos to determine their…’ he frowned trying to remember what the tests were used for, after all he never had need for them.

‘Age?’ Crowley suggested.

‘Yes, quite. But I’d have thought it’d be clear enough to a Shakespearean scholar from the actual text that at least some of the lost quartos were now in her possession. It was certainly clear to me. Why wouldn’t she announce it straight away? Get the whole world involved in the confirmation process?’

‘Well, Aziraphale, my darling,’ Crowley answered, putting his screen on the ground and sprawling out on the couch, ‘the thing about literary types—people obsessed with books and literature—the thing I’ve found about them, as their distinguishing feature, the thing is they have a tendency to be a bit tentative…’ his eyes darted across for Aziraphale’s reaction.

Aziraphale tutted and shook his head with faux annoyance.

‘A bit cautious…’

Another tut, this time with a smile.

‘Shy, even…’

A dramatic eye roll.

‘Some, not me of course, I’d never say such things but some people would even say a bit _slow_ …’

‘Oh good Lord…’ Aziraphale said, chuckling, ‘you are quite obvious, dearest and not at all funny.’

‘Why are you laughing then?’

‘I’m not,’ Aziraphale lied, ‘I’m...’ his voice trailed off as he saw the image on the television, ‘Crowley quick— turn it up!’

_In breaking news Dr Emily Barrett, an eminent scholar of English literature and a foremost expert on the works of William Shakespeare claims to have found six potential lost plays of the Bard and a further two plays of contemporaries of Shakespeare. She says she believes that the plays include Love’s Labour’s Won and Cardenio. She has shared the discovered quartos with the academic community who are working together to verify the quartos authorship. If confirmed, the lost plays could be performed again for the first time in over four hundred years. In other news…_

Crowley turned the volume back down. He grinned.

‘Well, Angel?’

‘We did it!’ Aziraphale cried out with an excited wiggle.

‘Operation Our Side is officially open for business,’ Crowley said with a grin, ‘I’ll get the champagne.’

‘I’ll get the food,’ Aziraphale said with another little shimmy, ‘just in time for dinner.’

‘Very considerate of Emily,’ Crowley said with a smirk.

Aziraphale fussed about with the food— a selection of French cuisine procured via a miraculously short trip across the channel and kept fresh and warm with yet another miracle— dishing up the starter of onion soup and getting the main courses ready for serving.

Crowley poured the first glasses of the champagne, casting a miracle to keep the bottle chilled at the table. He clicked his fingers, turning off the lights, and lighting candles for the table. He clicked his fingers again for music: Handel’s water music. Something they both liked.

As Aziraphale came out of the kitchen, pushing an ornate serving trolley with their meal ready to go he smiled in approval and delight at the romantic atmosphere.

‘Very nice, dear,’ Aziraphale said as they took their seats.

‘Well, it is a special occasion,’ Crowley grinned, lifting his champagne glass, ‘a toast?’

‘You do the honours, dearest.’

‘From humble beginnings as a simple Arrangement here we stand, a fully-functioning side-of-our-own. To being on our own side.’

‘To being on our own side,’ Aziraphale repeated with a soft adoring smile.

They each clicked their glasses and took a sip of the champagne.

Crowley raised his glass again, a smile playing about his lips, ‘may we vanquish both Heaven and Hell and reign supreme.’

‘I don’t think that’s quite the plan, my dear,’ Aziraphale said with a chuckle.

‘It isn’t?’ Crowley said with feigned confusion, ‘call off the cavalry then?’

Aziraphale chuckled again, shaking his head.

‘What about the ninjas? I did like the ninjas. They were highly trained.’

‘I’m pretty sure even ninjas would have difficulty infiltrating Heaven,’ Aziraphale replied as he started on his soup.

‘With some assistance from us, though?’ Crowley countered starting on his own soup, ‘I think you’d be surprised. No nightingale floors in Heaven.’

‘Nightingale floors?’

‘Floors deliberately made to creek so you’d hear the ninja approaching.’

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale frowned between spoonfuls to consider this, ‘I suppose Gabriel has never considered the possibility of an angelically and demonically assisted ninja attack.’

‘Which,’ Crowley said with a wave of his spoon, ‘is why it is such a good plan.’

Time passed in comfortable silence as they finished their soup. As Aziraphale served the mains—duck, beef, green beans and sautéed mushrooms —he said, ‘you know, I’m surprised you didn’t train as one at some point.’

‘Hm?’

‘A ninja.’

‘Oh,’ Crowley’s face went a little pink, ‘I may have had a few lessons. I’m a bit too um…’ he waved his hands around himself in a complicated gesture, ‘to be an actual ninja. But it was interesting.’

‘Yes, of course, I hadn’t thought of that,’ Aziraphale frowned thoughtfully.

‘Yes of course?! You are meant to object!’ Crowley growled, outraged. He imitated Aziraphale’s voice, ‘oh no dear you’d make a splendid ninja, absolutely tickiboo,’ Crowley returned to his normal voice, ‘that kind of thing.’

Aziraphale simply shook his head and tasted the duck. It was delicious: moist and tender and perfect.

Crowley made an incomprehensible noise and began on the mushrooms.

‘I’m not surprised you had lessons though. It fits with the whole thing you’ve got going on.’

‘Shuddup. We aren’t discussing the thing. Be grateful you get to see it in its full glory now.’

Aziraphale chuckled and focussed back on his meal, his face a flurry of pleasure, the occasional moan escaping. Crowley finished his own meal first, as he always did, and sat back to sip champagne and watch his angel continue to enjoy the food. As it often did, it made Crowley think about other things.

As Aziraphale finished his meal Crowley put the two desserts on the table: chocolate soufflé and crepe brûlée. He slipped into the kitchen returning with an expresso for himself and a cup of tea for Aziraphale. He took a little of both desserts, leaving more than half of each for Aziraphale. Again he finished first, settling in to watch Aziraphale’s delight over the soufflé.

‘Well,’ Aziraphale announced as his spoon hit the table with a clunk, ‘that was absolutely scrumptious.’

‘Hm.’

‘What now?’

‘A dance?’ Crowley asked, arm outstretched in invitation.

Aziraphale smiled coyly and clicked his fingers, changing the music to a waltz.

As they both stood, coming together, Crowley whispered, ‘you lead though.’

‘Oh, I think I’d better,’ Aziraphale replied.

‘Alright, steady on. My ego can only take so much.’

Aziraphale led them both in a simple waltz. As they turned about the candlelit room, completing the song, Crowley only stood on Aziraphale’s feet twice. He was improving. Aziraphale ended by taking Crowley into a dip and kissing him softly.

Crowley chased Aziraphale’s mouth as they straightened and the music faded, his lips finding warm welcome. Aziraphale’s hands traced their way down Crowley’s body and Crowley moaned into the kiss.

Crowley walked Aziraphale backwards until he was pressed up hard against the wall. Aziraphale grabbed at Crowley like a drowning man, ‘C-Crowley.’

Crowley showered Aziraphale with kisses, pressing the tokens of his love all over Aziraphale’s face and neck. Aziraphale sighed and reached up to Crowley’s head, stroking the long crimson locks, his fingers disrupting the fall of the curls. Pressed up as closely as they were Aziraphale couldn’t help but feel the physical manifestation of Crowley’s interest hardening against his thigh.

‘Ngah…’ Crowley groaned into Aziraphale’s mouth, his tongue once again finding a warm welcome there.

The physical manifestation of Crowley’s interest shifted and changed from hard and pressing, to wet and welcoming. Crowley shuddered with desire and Aziraphale felt him switch rapidly back and forth at a pace that made Aziraphale’s head spin.

‘Crowley, dearest,’ Aziraphale said with a warm and deep affection, running his hands through Crowley’s crimson locks, ‘we will do it all. Everything you want. But you need to choose a form, dear, to begin with…’

Crowley groaned, and Aziraphale felt a hard length pressing against his thigh again, ‘sssssorry, angel.’

‘To bed?’

‘Hm…’

They continued to kiss as they walked, locked in furious embrace as they moved as one to the bedroom where they engaged in all manner of lovemaking, both physical and celestial, for most of the night. Distracted as they were by their love for each other—and their urgent need to express it—they did not notice how the universe shivered and changed, even though it did so around them.

A seed­­—a tiny seed that had been lying dormant for some thirty years, quietly developing unseen, waiting for just the right time, the right signal, just the right nurturing shower of rain—broke through the soft ground and grew and grew, its roots spreading deep into the metaphysical fabric of the universe and its branches curling upwards, towards the light.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation.
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale spent the previous evening celebrating their first successful joint mission. Operation Our Side has been fully launched.
> 
> Trigger Warning: infant death mention; not discussed in any detail.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty nine days until The Big One**

**A hospital in Brighton, UK**

‘I AM _DEATH_ ,’ Death repeated.

‘You’re _what_ now?’

‘ _DEATH._ ’

‘Right. Sorry this is a bit of a steep learning curve I wasn’t expecting any kind of an afterlife,’ if a human soul could frown, the soul of Arthur Sinclair frowned, ‘now, wait a moment. Do you mean you are some kind of supernatural entity responsible for “reaping”, if you will, human souls at the moment of death?’

‘NOW YOU’RE GETTING IT. AND, ARTHUR SINCLAIR, IT IS TIME.’

Arthur looked back at the lifeless, old husk of a body lying in the hospital bed, white hair framing a wrinkled face, body stretched skin across bones, ‘Yeah I suppose it is…’ Arthur paused taking it all in, ‘I lived a good life… I loved with passion and constancy, I learned all I could, and I reminded myself whenever possible to be kind…’ he reached out to his old body, his new hands slipping through, ‘goodbye body, you served me well…’

The soul of Arthur Sinclair straightened up, if souls could be said to straighten up, as he turned back to Death, ‘well, do I have a bone to pick with _you_. Fifty-two years ago now, Mr Death, you sir reaped my nephew. My sister, who had waited years to conceive mind, who was the very model of a good mother, put her darling baby boy to bed and he never woke up. Jamie Williams. He was just five months old. He was innocent and beautiful and perfect and loved. How dare you! How very _dare_ you! He was a kid. You should never, _ever_ , kill kids.’

‘I DO MY JOB, ARTHUR. I TAKE THE SOULS THAT ARE RIPE FOR THE TAKING. IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THE GREAT PLAN YOU DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME. YOU SHOULD TAKE IT UP WITH THE ALMIGHTY.’

‘Oh, believe me, I will. Child morality? Malaria? Poverty? Genetic disorders? _Lethal_ genetic disorders? The food chain? It isn’t the existence of suffering that’s the real kicker— I can understand that a little bitterness can make the sweetness of life all the sweeter— it is the horrid unnecessary utterly pointless suffering. It is the suffering so extreme it breaks people. It is the gross inequity and injustice to its distribution. It is the fact that so much suffering is baked in, like the horror that is the food chain. Oh, I have plenty of issues to raise.’

‘OH DEAR,’ Death said, ‘I’M AFRAID YOU AREN’T GOING TO GET THE OPPORTUNITY.’

‘What? Why?’

‘THERE ARE TWO DESTINATIONS: HEAVEN, WITH THE ALMIGHTY, AND HELL. AND YOU ARE DESTINED FOR HELL.’

‘Why? I lived a good life. I did the best I could with what I had. I always tried to be a good person, to be kind, to live with integrity and to leave the world a better place. Ask anyone.’

‘BUT YOU DIDN’T HAVE _FAITH_ ,’ Death explained.

‘Well, no, I didn’t believe that a God existed and created the universe if that’s what you mean,’ Arthur said with irritation, ‘but there was never any _evidence_ of it.’

‘NEVERTHELESS,’ Death said, raising his arm, poised and ready to flick Arthur straight to Hell.

‘No! Wait! Are you saying I have to spend eternity in Hell, a place of torture and torment, because I didn’t believe in a God I had no evidence for?’

Death nodded.

‘What kind of ridiculous barbarous nonsense is this?’

‘IT IS THE GREAT PLAN.’

‘Well,’ Arthur snorted, ‘I don’t care for it at all. It makes absolutely no sense and it is unspeakably cruel.’

‘IT IS INEFFABLE.’

‘The Great Plan is _ineffable_?’ Arthur said incredulously.

‘YOUR VIEW IS IRRELEVANT. YOU ARE DESTINED FOR HELL.’

‘No. No. I refuse. I never aligned myself to Hell. I never chose an evil life. All I did was ask questions. All I did was base my beliefs on the best available evidence that I had at the time. What is so wrong about that? I am not going.’

‘YOU CANNOT GO TO HEAVEN.’

‘I don’t want to go to _Heaven_! Spend all of eternity with the beings who came up with this monstrous Great Plan nonsense? With beings who think it is okay to kill innocent kids like our Jamie just because it is all part of some blasted plan? I don’t think so. I demand a third option.’

Death sighed. Death knew they were building to this moment. It always came to this moment with these types. Death was so over this conversation, ‘THERE IS NO THIRD OPTION.’

‘Well, I demand one. Create one. A third option: a place for people who value knowledge, who defend freedom and personal agency, who ask questions, who love the world and try to protect it, to make it better. And, very importantly, a place for people who understand that you don’t kill kids!’

‘THERE IS NO…’ Death paused, sensing the deep and fundamental change in the metaphysics of the universe, ‘WAIT. SOMETHING HAS CHANGED. THERE IS A THIRD OPTION.’

‘Excellent. Does it fit my criteria?’ Arthur said.

‘YOU KNOW WHAT?’ Death replied, ‘I THINK IT DOES.’

Death clicked their bony fingers and Arthur Sinclair disappeared, the first soul sent neither to Heaven nor Hell but to a third destination. And as Death spread their wings of night to fly off to the next reaping Death muttered to themselves, ‘WHAT A TOSSER.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty nine days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s hair. Crowley was sound asleep and would be for awhile longer, Aziraphale knew. Aziraphale had already had a little doze—which was quite enough for him even after such an energetic evening—and he had spent some time reading in bed, just to stay close to the sleeping form of Crowley. But, it was well and truly morning and more importantly Aziraphale was feeling peckish.

Aziraphale kissed Crowley’s forehead and slipped out of their bed slowly and carefully. Crowley stirred for a moment but resettled and slept on. Aziraphale smiled with a warm affection. He found his clothes neatly folded on a chair in the corner of the bedroom—exactly where Crowley had left them the night before, Crowley was the tidier of the two but Aziraphale was fussy about his clothes—and efficiently dressed. Whereas Crowley simply miracled his clothes on (apart from the sunglasses which he selected carefully and bought in bulk), Aziraphale preferred to wear real clothes, to take care for them, and to take the time to physically dress.

Once dressed he picked up his book from the bedside table and crept out into the kitchen. Aziraphale put the kettle on and crumpets into the toaster and stood, book open, continuing to read as he waited. As always, he became quite distracted by his reading and the crumpets burned. Aziraphale sighed. At least Crowley wasn’t awake to snigger at him. He considered putting the burnt crumpets into the bin and cooking more but the food wastage seemed a valid enough reason for a miracle. So, instead he took his breakfast—burned crumpets, butter, a teapot of brewing tea, a milk jug of milk, plate, teacup—and his book over to his favourite spot at the table.

He turned the teapot three times each way and again became a little absorbed in his book while waiting for his tea to brew. At last, his attention was pulled back to his breakfast by his rumbling stomach. He poured a cup of tea, spread butter on his now burnt and cold crumpet, and eyes already back on the page cast a simple miracle to bring the crumpet to a perfectly toasted and warm state. He took a bite and received quite a surprise: his crumpet was cold and burnt. He rolled his eyes at himself. Obviously, he’d been so absorbed in reading he’d forgotten to actually perform the miracle.

He performed it again. Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. He felt a rush of panic, the same kind of panic a human might feel if they opened their eyes one morning and found they suddenly couldn’t see. Or went to get out of bed and found they suddenly couldn’t walk. As the panic rose inside, Aziraphale placed his bookmark into his book and his book onto the table. Flicking downwards, drawing energy from Heaven itself as he always did, he tried to make the book move on the table. Nothing. Then he tried to turn his tea into wine. Nothing. And then he tried, again, to change his crumpet from cold and burnt to warm and perfectly toasted. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

A terrible sinking feeling overcame him. Why now? After all these years? And how? Aziraphale did not know of any method by which Heaven could strip him of his powers. They were simply a part of his nature. Even the fallen angels at The Beginning had retained their power, they simply drew upon the energy of Hell instead. Oh. But surely not? Aziraphale mimicked the gesture he’d seen Crowley perform thousands of times, flicking not down but up, attempting to draw upon the energy of Hell. Still nothing.

So it wasn’t that simple. Not that that would have been simple, exactly. A second Fall would have been shocking and Aziraphale would not necessarily have been the only angel affected. Perhaps, Heaven had found a way to simply strip Aziraphale of his powers. Maybe it had taken them this long to find a way. In fact, they could have been searching for this solution for the past thirty years.

But then what about Crowley? Would he be affected too? Or was this the work of Heaven alone? Aziraphale considered waking him to test the possibility directly but quickly dismissed the idea. Crowley’s dramatic ranting would hardly help Aziraphale to think, and he needed to think, to figure out what exactly was going on.

Aziraphale tried a few more miracles to be certain. Nothing. Anxiety swirling in his stomach, he sipped his cup of tea while he thought it through. Why now? That was the crucial point, wasn’t it? Why the day after the completion their first successful mission? Why immediately after the full launch of Operation Our Side? It was too big of a coincidence. Aziraphale’s sharp mind settled onto the far more logical conclusion: Aziraphale and Crowley had done this to themselves. Operation Our Side. They had truly cut their final tie to Heaven and Hell and this was the result. Well, that was a shocking conclusion. Yet, Aziraphale had to admit there was a logic to it. He felt like he should have been able to foresee it.

Aziraphale finished his tea and poured himself another cup which he quickly downed. Right. The proper way to deal with this is to take a full inventory, surely? Yes. Must be. Aziraphale let himself slide into sensing the ethereal plane and found he still could. Check. He moved his shoulders and found his wings still in place, tucked up on the ethereal plane. He looked over his shoulder and they were still white. Check. He touched the “ring” on his pinky finger, the physical manifestation of his halo in his present form and found it was also all as it should be. Check. Next he allowed the boundaries of his own physical self to blur—all that space between elections—and found that was perfectly normal too. Right. He was as he had always been. Except he was no longer connected to Heaven.

He crept upstairs to Crowley, finding him still sound asleep. He again let himself sense the ethereal plane and saw that Crowley’s black wings were still there. He let his vision slide back to the physical world. The little snake-like marking on Crowley’s face was still there too. Crowley was the same. But, no there was a subtle difference, wasn’t there? Aziraphale sniffed deeply, smelling beyond the physical world, using his nose to sense the ethereal as he had used his eyes before. Crowley didn’t smell of Hell anymore, he didn’t smell evil. Aziraphale couldn’t have explained what the ethereal scent of Hell smelt like to a human, it wasn’t a physical smell at all. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell by nature not even to an angel and to Aziraphale, after all these years associating the scent with Crowley, it was actually rather nice. Was Aziraphale no longer angel enough to smell it? Or was Crowley no longer demon enough to have the ethereal odour?

Aziraphale sat on the bed and thought it through. They were still, essentially, an angel and a demon. They were the same species. But without any connection to Heaven or Hell. Aziraphale wondered if they could learn to perform miracles again, by drawing upon a different source of energy. But, of course, Crowley himself had already made that transition once, hadn’t he? He had shifted, at The Fall, from Heaven to Hell. Perhaps he would have some insight? And if not, Aziraphale would need to return to his Bookshop in order to find some answers. Regardless, Aziraphale decided that he had done all he could alone and it was time to wake Crowley.

Aziraphale bent down and gave Crowley a kiss on his forehead, ‘Crowley, dear,’ he whispered tapping him on the shoulder.

Crowley groaned, opening his eyes fraction, ‘Ziraphale…need more sleep. ‘m tired.’

‘I know, dear, but it is dreadfully important.’

‘Ngh.’

Crowley’s eyes opened slowly and he yawned, stretching his arms out.

‘Now,’ Aziraphale said as he smoothed out his clothes, ‘I don’t want you to panic. You must remain calm.’

‘Oh ‘cause that’s exactly what someone says when there’s nothing to panic over,’ Crowley replied sitting up, ‘hang on,’ he gestured upwards, his miracle gesture.

‘No!’

Crowley frowned at Aziraphale’s reaction. ‘Jus’ gettin’ an expresso, angel. What’s wrong?’

Aziraphale wrung his hands and frowned in silence, struggling to find the words to explain their predicament accurately and yet in a manner that wouldn't trigger blind panic in Crowley.

Crowley snorted and reached for where he thought an expresso would be waiting for him on the bedside table. There was nothing.

Crowley looked around everywhere, ‘Where is it?!’ He tried again. Nothing. He tried again. Nothing. He tried miracling his clothes back on. Nothing. His face contorted into a look of horror and his eyes bled golden all the way to the edge.

‘You too?’ he whispered hoarsely.

Aziraphale nodded slowly.

‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Fuck. Shit. They’ve cut us off haven’t they? The fucking bastards! The absolute wankers! How the fuck have they managed this?’ Crowley processed it all quickly, his golden eyes darting about the room, ‘Fuck, if they’ve done this, they are probably coming for us! We have to get out of here!’

Crowley leapt up to get out of the bed, but Aziraphale stilled him.

‘No, Crowley, dear. I don’t think they are. I think we did this,’ Aziraphale said with deliberate calm.

‘What?!’

‘Operation Our Side. I think we’ve broken our remaining tethers to Heaven and Hell and this is the result,’ Aziraphale said.

‘What does that mean?!’ Crowley screamed, arms flailing about dramatically.

‘I’m not sure. But, my dear, we remain the same in all other ways. See for yourself.’

Crowley shifted his vision to the ethereal plane. He checked for his wings behind him. He let the edge of his hand go fuzzy at the border. He sighed in relief to find that those aspects of himself were as they always were. He lifted his hand and fingered the snake mark on his face. 

‘Still there,’ Aziraphale said with a sympathetic smile, ‘Your eyes are the same too. As beautiful as ever.’

Crowley nodded in acknowledgement and swallowed hard. There was one more thing to test then but he hesitated.

‘You don’t have to, dear.’

‘You said I was being stupid,’ Crowley drawled.

‘No,’ Aziraphale tutted, ‘I said you have nothing to be afraid of. I’m certain you’ll always be able to transform back. But you don’t have to, dear.’

Crowley bit down hard on his lower lip. He wouldn’t be beaten by a ridiculous fear. Not now. He hesitated a moment longer and then he transformed into an enormous serpent—black scales like perfect jewels and a ruby red underbelly—he coiled on the bed and Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat at seeing the Serpent of Eden again. He had seen Crowley’s serpent form since Eden but it had been such a very long time. Crowley looked at Aziraphale, holding the angel’s gaze for a moment—his golden eyes still full of his intelligence and personality— and transformed back. It was a relief to know he could.

‘See?’ said Aziraphale, ‘we remain ourselves. We are still, essentially an angel and a demon. Still the same species I suppose. We simply can no longer draw upon the energies of Heaven and Hell. The most logical explanation is that we did this, we cut the final tether with Operation Our Side and this is the result.’

Crowley frowned, staring blankly at the bedcovers.

‘The thing is,’ Aziraphale continued when Crowley gave no response, ‘perhaps we could perform miracles if we could draw on a different energy source,’ he paused, he knew Crowley didn’t like talking about The Fall, in fact, apart from a few memorable drunken nights—memorable to Aziraphale in a bad way—Crowley generally didn’t mention it at all, ‘dear, you’ve learned to swap energy source once before. Was it like this? How did you discover how?’

Crowley’s blank expression instantly fractured and he began to laugh loudly with an edge of hysteria, ‘was it like this?! Was it like this?!’

He laughed again gesturing dramatically to accompany his explanation, ‘Nah, angel. I was too shocked by the sudden free fall, too busy writhing in agony and too overwhelmed by the screaming of the other fallen angels echoing around a me to realise a little thing like an inability to perform miracles had happened. By the time the burning settled to a level lower than absolute agony I knew what I was and what to do.’

Aziraphale’s forehead creased and be big is lower lip. It pained him deeply. He glanced away sadly, whispering, ‘I’m sorry.’

Crowley looked away, regretting giving Aziraphale the gory details of the Fall—he didn’t talk about it for this very reason— and he added quietly, ‘s alright, angel. Maybe Lucifer gave us the knowledge or maybe the Almighty did, maybe it was part of falling, but we already knew what to do. There was no discovery.’

A heavy silence settled over the room.

‘Still,’ Aziraphale said, ‘Heaven wasn’t the only possible power source. Even though, up until that moment, we all _thought_ it was. Maybe we could draw power from something different again.’

Crowley nodded slowly.

‘I need to go to the Bookshop. Do some research.’

‘Hm. Whatever you need. Whatever you think might help,’ Crowley said getting out of bed. He had no ideas himself. He felt numb, emptied out.

Crowley looked down at his naked form. Whereas Aziraphale bought quality clothes and cherished them Crowley usually simply miracled his into being and miracles them away again. Miracling up clothes wasn’t an option right now.

‘Oh, dear,’ Aziraphale said as he realised the problem, ‘I’ll find something for you.’

Aziraphale fossicked about in his wardrobe producing brown trousers and a pale blue button up shirt. Crowley grimaced in disgust.

‘I know, dear, I know but it is the best I can do, I’m afraid. You’ll need some pins. You are significantly leaner than me.’

Crowley pulled on the clothes in a displeased silence. Aziraphale fussed about, pinning the trousers and hitching them up with a brown belt and Crowley rolled up the short sleeves. He sighed, ‘I look ridiculous.’

Aziraphale smiled awkwardly. He did, in fact, look ridiculous. ‘It isn’t quite your style.’

Crowley sighed.

‘Oh, here, this’ll help dear,’ Aziraphale said as he passed Crowley a pair of his sunglasses.

Crowley slipped them on and shook his head at himself, ‘Lets go.’

They walked down together each silently contemplating their situation. Aziraphale detoured in the kitchen, grabbing a couple of pears for the journey.

Crowley smirked, eyebrow raised, ‘Priorities.’

‘I haven’t eaten yet and I can’t exactly miracle something up later, can I?’

‘Hah,’ Crowley snorted, ‘c’mon, angel.’

Crowley let Aziraphale in the passenger side of the Bentley and slid into the driver’s seat.

Aziraphale had a sudden, awful realisation, ‘Crowley, you can’t manipulate the traffic anymore, dear. You really must drive more carefully. You have to stick to the speed limit. And obey all the rules. Please, Crowley.’

Crowley waved Aziraphale’s concerns away, ‘yes yes, angel. I get it. I’m not an idiot.’

‘So you’ll stick to the speed limit?’

‘Yesss,’ Crowley hissed his hands clutching around the steering wheel. He stayed like that, perfectly still and silent for several minutes taking deep shuddering breaths.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Aziraphale whispered nervously.

‘Jussst thinking it through,’ Crowley replied tightly, ‘right.’

Crowley tried to start the car. It made an awful noise and utterly failed to start. ‘Fuck! Shit. Shit. Shit!’ Crowley screamed hitting the steering wheel with his head.

‘What is it, dear?’

Crowley slumped over the wheel. He sighed deeply, ‘Needs petrol.’

‘Oh! Where do we get that from?’

‘A petrol station, angel,’ Crowley said with another sigh. He took his foldable screen out of his pocket and did a Google search. ‘The closest one is that way,’ he said pointing, ‘over on the A23. But um…down the road a bit….’

‘Oh. That is quite a walk.’

‘I’ll get a container of some sort from the shed. You can wait here if you like. I mean, in the cottage not in the Bentley.’

Crowley jumped out the car and darted away to look in the shed. Aziraphale exited the car too and waited, quietly eating his pears. Crowley appeared after a while carrying an old tin.

‘S alright, angel. You can wait in the cottage. Finish your breakfast.’

‘I think we should stay together, in the circumstances,’ Aziraphale said with a determined look.

‘Yeah,’ Crowley quickly calculating and agreeing, ‘good idea. I’d never forgive myself if they came for you and I wasn’t around to protect you.’

They started to walk. At least it was a beautiful setting for a walk. The sun was shining. In normal circumstances it would have been quite pleasant.

‘What makes you think it’d be that way around?’ Aziraphale said indignantly, ‘you saving me?’

‘Of course it’d be that way around,’ Crowley said with a smirk, his bravado slipping into place, covering the desperate anxiety bubbling away inside.

Aziraphale knew better but decided not to argue. It was clear to him that Crowley was only just holding it together. Crowley would need all the cockiness he could muster. Now wasn’t the time for Aziraphale to disturb it.

They walked the long trek to the A23 and the petrol station. Crowley grumbled about the walk—between the walk for petrol and the under the speed limit drive to London they were going to spend the whole day travelling—but he had to concede they were lucky to at least live within walking distance of a petrol station. With so many cars now either electric or solar, petrol stations weren’t as common as they used to be. Crowley filled up the tin and they walked all the way back.

It took Crowley a full half an hour to remember how to open the Bentley’s petrol tank. He’d only done it once before, when the petrol stations were running a James Bond related promotion that he couldn’t resist and he’d used a miracle to do it that time.

Eventually, they were back in the Bentley, with a tank of petrol, ready to leave for London. Crowley started up the Bentley and this time it worked. He pulled it out—with uncharacteristic care—onto the country road.

It took a good twenty minutes for Crowley to get used to driving without any miracles smoothing the journey out or moving obstacles out of the way. He was grateful that Aziraphale didn’t comment. As the driving smoothed out and he mastered driving miracle-free, he was glad to have an excuse for a long drive. It was comforting to be in the Bentley. He felt like himself again. The underlying tension began to ease and he allowed himself to hope that Aziraphale would find a solution to their predicament.

Crowley glanced at Aziraphale quickly, he couldn’t afford the long looks away from the road that he usually took, ‘so, angel,’ he said looking back to the road, ‘what exactly are you wanting to research back at your Bookshop?’

Aziraphale watched the countryside roll away before them, at a much steadier and more pleasant pace than he was used to, ‘witchcraft my dear boy, witchcraft.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty nine days until The Big One**

**A hostel in Paris**

Morgan Pulsifier-Device frowned at her augmented reality screen. It wasn’t working. She wasn’t used to technology failing for her. In fact, technology always did whatever she expected it to do. Which could only mean one thing: her dad had attempted to answer her video call. She sighed.

Morgan let her eyes go soft and tuned into the energy field surrounding her universal device. She couldn’t explain what she was doing to anyone else. As far as she could tell, from extensive googling, she was the only person in the world who could do what she was doing. Of course, she’d confided in her mum and dad. She’d had long discussions with her mum about it, in fact. To explain it to her, she’d likened it to something they could both see: auras. Her mum had listened attentively, had tried very hard to understand and had finally said that as far as she was aware technology didn’t have auras but if Morgan was able to see something and it worked for her then that was just fine.

Once Morgan could see the UD’s energy field she could give it a little boost. She waggled her fingers at it to focus her mind, and the energy field twisted and shifted from black to gold. She knew from prior experience that she was powerful enough to buffer her father’s interference as long as she made a conscious effort.

Sure enough, the connection went through and her dad’s face came into view.

‘Hi, sweet pea!’ Newton smiled adoringly at his only child, pushing his glasses back up from where they’d slipped down his nose.

‘Hiya, dad!’

‘Mum’s running late. But she will be home any minute now.’

‘I figured when I couldn’t connect straight away,’ Morgan answered.

Newton nodded, ‘Aha. She got caught up with a new student. Some bright young thing who wants to do their thesis on the invention of the thing-a-me-bob or was it the what’s-it?’ Newton frowned trying to recall the details from his breakfast conversation with his wife. He shrugged, ‘One of them.’

‘Sounds right up mum’s alley whichever it is,’ Morgan said with a warm smile.

‘Well, exactly. And so here I am, by myself, talking to you.’

‘How’s the farm going anyway?’

‘All’s well. The lavender is thriving and the goats keep me busy. The cottage is booked out pretty solidly. People seem to get only more interested in spending time on a traditional low-tech farm. Fortunately for me. Oh, and your mum wants me to expand the herb garden. I’m meant to go shopping for it tomorrow. She’s written a list. I’m not sure they are all going to be easy to find to be honest.’

‘Oh, don’t be pushed into it if you don’t want to, dad.’

‘I don’t mind, sweetpea. It makes her happy. She married me and gave me you. I pretty much owe her for life I think,’ he laughed at his own joke, ‘but how are you? You’re the one doing the exciting stuff.’

‘I’m well, dad. I saw the catacombs today.’

‘Catacombs?’ Newton repeated, ‘oh, wait! Here’s your mum!’

Morgan could hear a door slam in the background and a moment later her mum appeared at the screen out of breath.

‘Sorry, Morgan love,’ Anathema puffed, ‘I got caught up with a student, she wants to do her PhD on the invention of the what’s-it, and I lost track of time. I haven’t missed anything have I?’

‘Nothing but me babbling about the farm. Morgan was just about to regale us with stories about the catacombs.’

‘Catacombs?’ Anathema repeated.

‘Yeah, rows and rows of skeletons under Paris, all arranged like it’s I dunno artwork or something,’ Morgan explained, ‘here I’m sending pictures now.’

Anathema and Newton looked at the images of the bones neatly stacked and arranged with macabre neatness and listened with rapt attention as Morgan told her of her latest adventures travelling and her upcoming plans. When they finally had to end the call, over an hour later, Morgan was left feeling a bit homesick. She was enjoying her European trip, but it was lonely to be travelling alone. In a way she was glad she would be heading home soon. It would be nice to see the farm again, to help dad with the goats, to quiz her mum on witchcraft and to resume their Friday night games nights.

But in another way, she dreaded returning home. A decision awaited her. A big decision. The big decision. She had hoped the answer would naturally arise sometime between Greece and Austria. But it remained elusive. Her stomach knotted up at the very thought of it.

She ate her dinner— just some bread, tomatoes and cheese, cheap but in Paris, delicious—had a shower and answered a few emails, trying to stave off the loneliness and put the big looming decision out of her mind. It didn’t work.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. To survive the forty days they need to get a job. 
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale launched Operation Our Side only to find that they can no longer perform miracles. Aziraphale seeks answers at the Bookshop.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty seven days until The Big One**

**St James Park, London**

As Lil showed up for her first shift for her first job, she still wasn’t sure what to expect. A job washing dogs? Why did they even need washing in the first place? The actual washing of the dogs turned out to be the easy bit. It was mostly done by a mobile machine. You had to calm the dog, coax them to get inside, press the button and the machine did the rest. But a human was absolutely necessary for the coaxing bit. Well, that’s how Ethan, her new co-worker had explained it. And with the sheer number of regulars on today, Ethan was relieved that Lil had been able to fill in at the last minute.

“Regulars” was what Ethan called the dogs that had been booked in in advance by their owners. Most of the regulars had to be collected from their home, walked to St James Park, given time to play and socialise with the other dogs, given a good wash, and then returned to their home well-exercised, happy and clean. “Walk-ins” was what Ethan called the other dogs: dogs that came with their owners. Sometimes this was planned but often the owner, taking their dog for a walk, would spot the mobile machine and decide to splurge on a machine wash while they were there.

Two people were necessary to make the most of the walk-ins because someone needed to stay by the machine. When it became clear that Lil didn’t know the first thing about dogs Ethan’s blue eyes had widened with surprise— why would someone so obviously disinterested in dogs apply for this job? — but he didn’t ask, he didn’t comment and he politely masked his surprise as best he could. Ethan just made a point of explaining everything, absolutely everything, very carefully.

Ethan and Lil did everything together until Lil knew what she was doing, sacrificing the walk-ins in order to train Lil, but once she got the hang of it they started splitting up. One of them would stay by the mobile dog washing machine and the other would collect one of the regulars, give them a walk and a play and then bring them to the machine for a wash. Then they’d swap.

At first Lil found the whole thing utterly bizarre. Why would the humans do this? Why did they even want dogs in their homes, especially seeing as it was so much trouble? Hell had its hell hounds and the demons fed them. But they fed them so they’d grow and survive and they certainly didn’t wash them or play with them. The demons wanted hell hounds around in order to make use of them (the main use being terrifying the human souls trapped in hell) so Lil could easily understand why there would be, say police dogs. But none of these dogs did anything useful. What did the dogs do to earn such devotion from the humans?

But as she interacted with the dogs, and watched the interactions between the dogs and their owners, she began to understand. The dogs seemed to genuinely care about their humans. They were…friendly.

When they came to one dog in particular, a regular, Ethan insisted that Lil take her even though it was out of turn. Lil shrugged and went along with it. She walked the short walk to the dog’s home briskly, and found herself coming face to face with Molly, a brilliantly intelligent chocolate brown Labrador. Molly sized Lil up, her deep brown eyes looking into her very soul. Molly sniffed Lil carefully, and Lil stood still with her hand out while she did, just like Ethan had shown her. Molly looked up at Lil, a question in her perceptive gaze.

‘Ah, you are right, Molly,’ Lil said, bending down to whisper the next bit, ‘not entirely human.’

Molly nodded as if she understood and sniffed her again for a final confirmation. Satisfied, she ran to her front door and barked. Lil figured she’d passed the test. And she had. But that was just the start.

Molly coaxed Lil— just as Lil had been taught to coax the dogs into the dog washing machine— into playing _with_ her, rather than just watching her play. It started with throwing sticks. Molly brought the sticks to Lil, and sat, looking up at Lil with begging brown eyes until Lil relented and threw them. A few throws in and Lil began to feel a lightness she had never felt before. She was enjoying herself. Soon Lil was running with Molly, tumbling around on the grass, laughing all the while.

This was something about the world that all the forces of Heaven and Hell had never told her about. It wasn’t filth. It wasn’t righteous. It was just—Lil struggled to find the word—happy. A simple happiness. It seemed a precious thing. This was physicality that was fun, desire that was simple and shared and pure. Perhaps this was what God had intended the world to be like? Perhaps this was what Eden had been?

As she walked Molly back to the mobile dog washing machine, Ethan looked up and laughed, ‘I knew it!’

‘What?’ Lil said, confused.

‘I knew Molly would be the one,’ Ethan said. He bent down and gave Molly a scratch in her head, ‘You’re a good girl, Molly. Good girl.’

Molly’s tail beat out a happy rhythm on the ground as she turned her head to fully enjoy Ethan’s attentions.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Lil sighed in frustration.

‘You are smiling, Lil. First smile I’ve seen from you all day. I knew Molly could wring one out of you.’

‘Oh! Yeah, I suppose she did,’ Lil replied sheepishly. She looked down at Molly, finding herself smiling again, ‘I like her.’

‘She’s a dog in a million,’ Ethan replied, eyes focussed on Molly as he kept scratching her head, ‘you should keep it up. The smiling I mean. If you want. Oh, um, I didn’t mean that to sound creepy. Just, um, it suits you. It is good to see you happy. Argh, I’d better wash Molly.’

Making a point of not looking at Lil, Ethan coaxed Molly towards the dog washing machine and Molly happily followed. Lil stood frozen on the spot for entirely too long.

Lil thought about Molly—the sweet uncomplicated joy of playing with her— for the whole journey back to the flat. Well, almost. She also thought about Ethan’s compliment. Happiness danced in her gut and she couldn’t help but smile again.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty seven days until The Big One**

**A.Z. Fell and Co. Purveyor of Books to the Gentry, Soho, London**

From the moment the Bentley had pulled into the closest park to the Bookshop possible without a miracle, to now, two days later Aziraphale had been steadily working his way through every book he owned that referenced witchcraft however obliquely. The discarded books had grown into tall towers around his desk, and he had filled no less than seven notebooks with his notes, written mostly in English but occasionally making use of Latin, Hebrew, ancient Greek and some symbols that no human would recognise, well, unless you count Evie and Lil. Aziraphale tutted, sighed, muttered to himself and worked with unwavering focus.

Crowley, on the other hand, was at somewhat of a loss. The first thing he had done after arriving in London was purchase clothes. Crowley liked staying up to date, including in fashion, so he was familiar with all the best boutiques and warehouses. Browsing clothing was familiar enough to him and something he regularly enjoyed. But where he usually simply memorised the style and miracled up the clothes perfectly tailored to his physique, this time he had to try the clothes on, find sizes that fit in styles that suited, and measurements that worked for his body. Then he had to purchase them. This he found a little more frustrating and he vowed several times to find out which demon had been responsible for creating standard clothing sizes and make them pay.

Although his inability to miraculously tailor the clothes was frustrating it didn’t take that long, really, to purchase a number of outfits—drainpipe trousers were back in, the little black dress still yet be out since Coco Chanel had invented the concept, and Crowley had managed to find a particularly nice black jacket that suited his skinny frame— and so Crowley was left with little to do while Aziraphale researched.

Crowley slipped into a support role, reconciling himself to fetching Aziraphale books, fresh notebooks, pens and cups of tea. He took note of mealtimes and reminded Aziraphale to eat, something he never normally had to do and wasn’t technically necessary but it gave Crowley great pleasure to tempt Aziraphale with all of his favourite foods. All of these supportive tasks were more involved now neither of them could perform miracles. But they didn’t fill in Crowley’s time.

When Crowley wasn’t needed to fetch a book or coax Aziraphale into taking a break for lunch he lounged on the couch. He watched old Disney movies on his UD screen—The Lion King was a clear improvement on Hamlet, Disney had immediately understood that it needed jokes, and he supposed, lions—but he only half-watched them. Mostly, he stewed upon their inability to perform miracles and his own inability to imagine a solution. He worried and grew increasingly frustrated, hovering on the edge of a full-blown malaise.

Crowley was dozing on the couch, feeling rather melancholy, when Aziraphale finally announced that he was finished.

‘Well, that’s that then,’ Aziraphale said, carefully placing the last book on a towering pile, standing up and stretching.

Crowley started awake and rapidly pulled himself up into a sitting position, ‘you’ve figured it out? A solution?’

‘I have finished reading every reference to witchcraft that I own,’ Aziraphale said with a smile as he shook out his hands and sat back down.

‘Gah,’ Crowley groaned, ‘that’s not the same thing, angel. Do you have a way out of this or not?’

‘Possibly,’ Aziraphale nodded thoughtfully, ‘perhaps. Tell me, Crowley, what do you know about witches?’

Crowley frowned, ‘Well, Shadwell was always convinced they had a lot of nipples.’

Aziraphale tutted and rolled his eyes, ‘He really was a stupid man.’

Crowley snorted, ‘You’re not wrong,’ he paused, ‘Well, there are, you know, satanic witches. I always kept away from those sorts. All the chicken blood and the dreams of necromancy, and the attempts to summon us,’ Crowley shuddered, ‘always found them bit embarrassing…like those American televangelists are for you…’

Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled in disgust, ‘I don’t mean _them_. None of them are genuine. And, of course, most supposed cases of witchcraft weren’t witchcraft at all. Just people getting whipped up into blood lust and misogyny and targeting an innocent woman with a gift for herbal medicine.’

Crowley grinned, for a moment forgetting current troubles in favour of treasured memories, ‘or even an angel who got a little carried away.’

Aziraphale coughed, ‘Yes, well. The point is: actual witches. Some people who truly did have an extraordinary gift. Agnes Nutter, for example.’

‘Right,’ Crowley drawled, ‘what’s your point?’

‘My point is: where did the draw their energy from? And can we use the same source?’

‘Ohhhh!’ Crowley groaned leaning back on the couch, thinking, ‘well, where?’

‘It is difficult to pinpoint,’ Aziraphale said with a frown, ‘after all it is hard to separate the potentially real cases of witchcraft from the pretenders and the victims. Plus, it isn’t exactly a question they were actually asked and I’m not sure the witches themselves were even aware they were doing it.’

‘Argh,’ Crowley groaned, burying his face in his hands, ‘so hopeless then.’

‘No, no. By sifting through all of it, you can get a board brush sense of what they might be focusing on,’ Aziraphale said smoothing out his jacket, ‘There is a tentative pattern, themes if you will: the seasons, nature, fertility, love, sex, the sun, the moon, the ground, plants, animals, the Earth…’

‘The Earth?’ Crowley repeated with eyebrows raised, his imagination captured, instantly seeing the possibility, ‘Is it that simple?’

Crowley thought of the Earth and flicked his hand in a sideways motion. Nothing happened. Crowley growled in frustration.

Aziraphale chuckled, ‘I didn’t intend to suggest it would quite that simple, dear. It isn’t a matter of just flicking your hand sideways!’

‘Nagh!’ Crowley shook his hands in the air as he yelled, ‘Didn’t just flick sideways! I thought of the Earth!’ He leapt up, paced back and forth restlessly a few times, muttering curses and collapsed back on the couch, head back in his heads.

Aziraphale watched patiently with a warm and understanding smile. When Crowley flopped back onto the couch Aziraphale knew he could continue, ‘I think if we focus on just the right focal point, on connecting ourselves to the world yes, but to what we love about the world as well as to our own side and what that means to us it just might work. I think it will take concentration at first. Let’s see…’

Aziraphale closed his eyes and took several steadying breaths. He remembered the early days of the Arrangement, how it grew into something more in spite of his best efforts, and the little demonic miracle that told him Crowley truly did love him after all. He remembered deciding that he would not fight in Heaven’s war, choosing instead to return to Earth. He remembered standing next to Adam with Crowley and facing Satan himself, the long bus ride back to London and the promises made, a long-awaited lunch at the Ritz, and the recent thrill of launching Operation Our Side. He thought about all he loved about the world: the books, the music, the food, he thought about regency snuff boxes and misprinted bibles and evenings drinking red wine with Crowley. He thought about the humans, the ridiculous and utterly lovable humans who found love and grace in the most awful of circumstances and the most unusual of ways. He thought of the life he and Crowley had made together despite so much opposition. And he was back to remembering that lunch at the Ritz in a world newly saved, with all the freedom to act on his love for Crowley. He remembered their toast: to the world.

Aziraphale whispered the words softly like a prayer, like an invocation, ‘to the _world’_.

Flick. A ball of light hovered in the bookshop.

‘You did it!’ Crowley shouted leaping up off the couch.

Aziraphale opened his eyes and smiled, ‘I did, didn’t I?’ He focused again and…flick. The ball of light disappeared.

In the very next moment Crowley’s arms wrapped around Aziraphale and his lips pressed hard against Aziraphale’s own as he whispered into Aziraphale’s mouth, ‘you are clever and brilliant and marvellous…’

Aziraphale kissed Crowley back enthusiastically, blushing softly, pleased at the compliments as well as the pleasure of solving their predicament.

Breaking away from the kiss Aziraphale said, ‘Now you try, my dear, you need to anchor yourself to the world and to our own side. Forging the connection itself, drawing on the energy is like a miracle of its own. You need to really imagine it all.’

Crowley nodded, ‘Right. Easy.’ He closed his eyes and remembered slithering up the wall of Eden to speak to a certain angel. He remembered an Arrangement that became something more and the flask of holy water that confirmed that Aziraphale really did feel the same way. He remembered when he’d first thought of them as being on their own side and the first time Aziraphale had truly confirmed it on a bus trip to London. He remembered elaborate plans to save the world, the dark hopelessness when all seemed lost and the courage to drive through a wall of fire itself when the slightest glimmer of hope presented itself again. He thought about all he loved about the world: the music, the technology, his Bentley, the wide universe stretching up above nebula and galaxies and everything, the fun that was to be had and the lazy naps afterwards. He thought about the humans, the brilliantly clever humans always coming up with something new, something better, always asking questions, experimenting, getting themselves into mischief. There was something in that that was precious and needed protecting. Our own side. Our own side.

Flick. Time ground to a halt, with only himself and Aziraphale spared.

Aziraphale tutted as he looked out the window at the frozen people, ‘Bit over the top, don’t you think?’

Crowley shrugged, ‘S my signature move in a way, isn’t it? Anyway, start big and I know I can do it all again.’

‘I suppose,’ Aziraphale conceded. He was tempted to make another comment about showing off but he magnanimously held his tongue.

Flick. Time restarted.

‘We’re back,’ Crowley grinned.

Aziraphale nodded and smiled widely, ‘We’re back.’

‘And we really are our own side now,’ Crowley drawled his eyes glimmering with mischief.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. To survive the forty days they need to get a job.
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale have found an alternative power source for their miracles: Earth.
> 
> Arthur Sinclair is the first human soul to be sent to a third destination after death: neither Heaven nor Hell.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty five days until The Big One**

**The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, London**

Evie chewed her lip nervously and listened as best she could to the Head Nurses’ explanation.

‘So, we’ve connected your universal device is connected to our mainframe. You can check on the preferences and commitments of all of the residents: what they are interested in for conversational purposes, their scheduled medical and allied health appointments, what organised activities to take them to, what virtual reality experiences they enjoy, when they are expecting video calls from friends and family. Some will have notes from the social worker or psychologist. You definitely want to pay attention to that, they may leave you specific instructions. You can also find bioinformatics for all of the residents. That’s very handy for monitoring the success of any new initiatives as you can imagine,’ the Head Nurse took a deep breath, ‘Now I’m not sure what system you are used to, but here we assign Wellness Facilitators a specific caseload of residents. You’ll be taking units six to ten and focussing on the needs of those residents. They are all low need, mostly independent. We always start new staff with the low need residents. Though as a Wellness Facilitator, you may find the more independent residents keep you busier!’

The Head Nurse laughed before continuing, ‘Of course, it is fine to make arrangements and coordinate with the other Wellness Facilitators to make the most of your time. But, at the end of the day, you are responsible for units six to ten,’ the Head Nurse took another deep breath, ‘and it goes without saying that you do not reposition residents or feed them unless you are doing so under the direction and supervision of one of the Nurses or an Aged Care Worker and you never give them medication. I know that is obvious but there have been incidents before. Not really relevant now but it will be in the future if you move onto some of the higher need residents. And if there’s a medical emergency, of course, you press the big red button. There’s one in every unit and community room. Any questions?’

Evie shook her head, too dizzy trying to process the sudden onslaught of information to even imagine what she might have asked.

The Head Nurse nodded, ‘Right, well I’m sure you know what you are doing. Oh! Wait a moment!’

The Head Nurse waved down a young woman walking down the path between the little self-contained units ‘Mia?’

The woman bounded over, running her hand through her brown hair and messing up her choppy pixie cut. The bangles on her wrists jangled at the movement.

‘Evie, this is Mia. She’s the Wellness Facilitator for units one to five. I’m sure she’ll be very happy to show you the ropes.’

Mia smiled with unabashed delight, her dark brown eyes lighting up, ‘Oh I absolutely would. Nice to meet you, Evie.’

Evie smiled shyly, ‘Nice to meet you too.’

‘Right,’ the Head Nurse said, ‘I’ll leave you to it.’

As the Head Nurse left, Mia leaned in to Evie, ‘Ill be honest: you look like a deer caught in the headlights.’

Evie laughed shakily, ‘Do I? Oh, dear.’

Mia burst out laughing, ‘you’re funny! That’s good. A sense of humour is important around here. Look, it really is pretty simple. You keep them company. Talk to them about things they like. Make sure they remember their medical and allied health appointments and the group activities they participate in. Help them set up their video calls with family and friends and set them up in the VR whenever they want. Half my time is having cool conversations. I’ve learned stacks working here. It’s fun.’

Mia pulled out her foldable screen, ‘so in unit six, oh that’s Glenn. Real sci-fi buff Glenn. Nice guy, fun to talk to. Or unit seven, that’s Fiona. Oh, I love Fiona. Friends with Glenn actually. She’s a musician. She was in a band in her younger days. Never made it big though.’

Evie peered over at the screen, chewing her lip.

‘See here you can see all of the appointments, group activities and video calls they’ve got booked in for today. Make sure everyone gets to those, but apart from that I’d just pop into every unit and have a good chat. Get to know them a little better and go from there. They’ll tell you what they want. It isn’t up to us really. Everyone here has enough of their wits about them still. It makes it easy.’

Evie nodded, ‘Alright. I think I can do that.’

Mia grinned, ‘Course you can. And I’ll be around here too if you need me. Touch base with me anytime.’

Evie nodded, ‘thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it. Well, I just saw Glenn and Fiona chatting in the community room. Why don’t you start there?’

Evie nodded, ‘Alright I will,’ she looked around, confused and disoriented, ‘Um, where is that?’

Mia pointed out a large Hall at the end of the block of ten units.

Evie smiled sheepishly, ‘of course, thanks,’ she headed for the Hall and Mia paused for a moment, watching her go before she resumed her own activities.

Evie found Glenn and Fiona playing checkers in the community room, deep in discussion. Glenn was wearing a Red Dwarf T-shirt and Fiona had tattooed armbands in a Celtic pattern and short pink hair. Evie didn’t know enough about the Earth to realise how well they confirmed Mia’s descriptions. She introduced herself and explained that she’d be their new Wellness Facilitator. Well, one of them. Every resident had multiple facilitators as they worked in shifts and most people worked part-time.

Glenn raised an eyebrow and Fiona beamed. Introductions done they brought Evie into their conversation.

‘I was just saying to Fiona here that the most disappointing thing about getting old is they still haven’t invented hoverboards. We were meant to have hoverboards by 2015! Where’s my hoverboard? Not to mention flying cars, we have driverless cars but no flying cars. They focused on the wrong thing there if you ask me…’

Evie struggled to follow the conversation. She was thinking of the hoverboards some angels used in Heaven and wondering why this human thought they should be on Earth too let alone by a specific time. Was it the subject of a divine revelation at some point? Evie couldn’t recall.

Fiona laughed as she made her next move in the game, ‘she doesn’t get the reference, Glenn. You are confusing her!’

Glenn snorted and made his move, ‘Just an old movie. Don’t mind me. But I do want my hoverboard.’

‘Back to the Future,’ Fiona added.

‘Back to the Future II,’ Glenn corrected.

Fiona sighed, ‘that’s what I meant. Honestly.’

The exchange did not clarify things for Evie one bit. Apart from The Sound of Music which she’d been forced to watch more times than she could count, her exposure to movies was very limited indeed.

Evie chewed on her lip, trying to work it out, ‘There was a prophesy then? I didn’t realise humans expected hoverboards.’

Glenn’s eyes narrowed, ‘Didn’t realise _humans_ expected hoverboards. What are you, Vulcan?’

‘No, of course not. I’m human. Nothing but human. Why wouldn’t I be?’ Evie said quickly with a note of hysteria.

Glenn laughed, ‘I know, don’t fret, don’t have the right ears for a start,’ he waggled his finger at Fiona, ‘I like this one. Oh yes, I like this one. She’s going to be fun.’

Fiona smiled towards Evie kindly, ‘me, too. Why don’t you pull up a seat, Evie? You can play the winner.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty five days until The Big One**

**A.Z. Fell and Co Purveyor of Books to the Gentry, Soho, London**

In spite of the blessed relief of discovering a new energy source for their miracle working, time was required to refine the technique. They could do it. They could perform any of the miracles they had performed before. Their abilities were only limited—as indeed, they always had been—by their imagination. The issue was speed. They now needed to first develop the proper mental focus, the connection to the world and to their own side, and then fully envision the miracle itself.

The delay would not do. In some situations speed was vital. Hence they had spent the past two days practising, speeding up. When they weren’t practising Aziraphale was flicking through his books, trying to piece together any shred of information that may prove helpful in their new situation.

‘Wanna glass, angel?’ Crowley asked as night descended, waving about a particularly nice bottle of merlot.

Aziraphale looked up from his book, ‘Oh yes please my dear,’ he put the book on the desk beside him and slipped his glasses off rubbing his eyes.

Crowley clicked his hands and made two glasses appear on the desk, miraculously transported from the kitchen.

‘Much faster,’ Aziraphale said.

‘Barely had to think about it then,’ Crowley agreed as he poured the wine, ‘S becoming automatic.’

Crowley passed Aziraphale his glass and Aziraphale took a sip gladly. Crowley collapsed onto the couch opposite Aziraphale and sprawled out, sipping his wine.

‘Every time we do it we are making the connection stronger, smoother, like a path in the woods worn away through constant travel,’ Aziraphale said.

Crowley made an incomprehensible noise of agreement.

‘Do you think we will reach a point when they notice?’ Aziraphale continued with a frown, ‘Heaven and Hell I mean…’

‘Maybe,’ Crowley said sipping his wine, ‘haven’t noticed yet. They’d have come after us while we were vulnerable if they’d ‘ave known.’

‘Hmmm,’ Aziraphale agreed with a nod.

‘But we aren’t vulnerable now. So I dunno if this’ll change anything. They already think of us as something else. They’ll be glad to ‘ave us off the books for good,’ Crowley drawled.

‘You are probably right,’ Aziraphale agreed, ‘anyway all we can do is be prepared. No sense working ourselves into a tizzy.’

‘A _tizzy_?’ Crowley repeated with disgust, ‘You’ll never see me in a _tizzy_.’

Aziraphale laughed, almost spluttering his wine all over himself. He finally managed to swallow. ‘Oh forgive me, dear, but you work yourself into a tizzy quite regularly.’

‘Shuddup.’

Aziraphale obediently quietened but his eyes danced with amusement as he finished his wine. Crowley made a point of ignoring it as he poured them both more. Second glass of wine poured for them both he collapsed onto the couch, wine sploshing about in the glass.

‘Y’know what I don’t understand, angel…’ Crowley took a sip of wine before continuing, ‘How come some humans can draw on the energy of the world? Do their own miracles or whatever? Ain’t supposed to be able to, are they? Or if they are, if they are, why can’t they all do it? Doesn’t make sense.’

‘Ah,’ Aziraphale said looking down at his wine. He had given this some thought already, ‘well, I’m not sure. I mean I really don’t know. There was never really an official position on this in Heaven, apart from the dictate that they shouldn’t do it.’

Crowley golden eyes narrowed. He knew when Aziraphale was holding back, ‘you don’t _know_ but you’ve got an idea.’

Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably, ‘perhaps.’

‘Well?’ Crowley asked, eyes raised, hand waving about dramatically, ‘out with it.’

‘If there were survivors of _you know_ ,’ Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably, ‘their decedents may have had, well, something of the angelic about them.’

Crowley stared at Aziraphale open mouthed, ‘what are you talking about, angel?’

Aziraphale fidgeted with his glass of wine, ‘Ah. I guess that means I never told you. Well, suppose we didn’t know each other well enough at the time and I guess this means it never came up since. Not exactly something I like to recall. It was long ago,’ Aziraphale sighed and sipped on his wine, ‘some angels—they never said who—may have well, decided to _love_ humans in quite a specific way…’ Aziraphale used exactly the same tone a human would use to say ‘I think that shepherd _loves_ his sheep in quite a specific way…’

Crowley’s nose wrinkled up in disgust. He took a swig of wine, ‘Some demons have too, of course. Some demons have done just ‘bout anything.’

‘Yes, but they, well, they _impregnated_ them,’ Aziraphale said, chewing on his lip nervously, ‘there were _children_.’

‘Oh!’ Crowley said is eyes widening, ‘Heaven wouldn’t ‘ave liked that.’

Aziraphale shook his head slowly, pursing on his lips.

‘So Heaven, what, punished the angels and killed the kids? But you think there may ‘ave been a kid or two who slipped through?’ Crowley said.

Aziraphale sipped his wine again, lost for a moment in thought, lost in memories of the past. Eventually, he answered, his voice hollow, ‘Oh, I know some children survived the Flood. I saw you rescuing them. Convinced some of them to go with you, in fact. I just can’t be sure if any were of the survivors were nephilim. And even if some were I don’t know if the nephilim are related to witches in any way. That’s pure speculation on my part,’ Aziraphale paused taking another swig of wine, ‘that’s what they called them, the children: nephilim.’

Crowley stared at Aziraphale for the longest time. So long, Aziraphale began to worry.

‘Crowley?’

‘Well, fuck,’ Crowley cried, coming back to the present with a snap, ‘Fuck, shit and bollocks. I dunno why ‘m so… it was always genocide…rain for forty fucking days and nights but _fuck_. Heaven was just covering up its own damn… ‘n they did too…Didn’t hear anything ‘bout this in Hell… gah!’

Aziraphale looked away, his gaze drifting to rest on nothing in particular.

‘In hindsight,’ Aziraphale whispered more to himself than Crowley, ‘the Almighty must have been gone from Heaven, even then. I can’t believe she’d….’ his voice trailed off and his eyes filled with tears of sadness for people long dead.

Crowley snorted. His assessment of the Almighty’s character differed significantly from Aziraphale’s. But what did that matter? Aziraphale didn’t believe Heaven’s bullshit anymore at least. And he was right about one thing in Crowley’s opinion: the Almighty was long gone or at least determined to maintain radio silence, to let them all flail about on their own for her amusement.

They downed their glasses and Crowley poured them more in a weary silence. The faces of children long dead swum in his mind, not the faces of those he saved, but the many more he did not, the children who had succumbed to the unrelenting torrent of rain.

Aziraphale put his glass down and joined Crowley on the couch, pulling Crowley into his arms. Aziraphale ran his fingers through Crowley’s hair, his fingers twirling around the crimson curls and he kissed him gently on the forehead. Crowley sighed, and let himself find comfort—as he couldn’t at the time— in the arms of the one he loved.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty five days until The Big One**

**The garden of a cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Arthur Sinclair hadn’t had any expectation of the afterlife apart from expecting it to simply not exist. So, finding himself transported by Death to a cottage garden, well, that was a small surprise in comparison to the surprise of simply continuing to exist at all.

When he first arrived, Arthur set about exploring the garden efficiently and thoroughly. Initially, he found himself to be quite alone. But he didn’t remain alone for long.

Arthur couldn’t have been in the garden for more than fifteen minutes when he was joined by another human soul. Others kept arriving— disoriented and confused—and Arthur, as the first being to arrive, had a certain initial authority.

Arthur’s status as the very first arrival gave him that initial authority, but Arthur’s own disposition, his own talents and skills, meant that he was actually quite suited to the role. In life, Arthur had forged a highly successful career in various government departments and non-profit organisations. He was highly skilled at diplomacy, at practical problem-solving, at identifying the right people for the right job and supporting them to make it all happen.

Arthur welcomed the new arrivals with tact and care, supporting them through the initial adjustment. He saw immediately that they weren’t just arriving haphazardly in a garden, they were forming a community and hence, the new community would need a system of government. He put this to his fellow arrivals and, together, they decided upon a simple system of direct democracy. In the first democratic vote they made Arthur’s defacto representative role official. Arthur was deeply honoured and he took to it with enthusiasm.

There were several scientists in the first few batches of arrivals, and they set about conducting simple experiments, testing hypotheses like: can we leave the garden? And can we touch anything? Arthur thought it a jolly fine idea. The answers unfortunately were no and no. But continued exploration confirmed that this was, indeed, a cottage garden. The new inhabitants could even, by peering over the side fence, see a small country road. By taking turns watching the road they managed to sight a person. The sighting caused quite a stir, especially since it seemed to confirm the working hypothesis that they were in an actual cottage garden in the physical world, most likely somewhere in England.

With time, the new community also discovered that language was no longer a barrier. The arrivals were coming from all over the world and they could all, simply by speaking their native tongue, understand each other. There was heated debate about whether to call this the Babel Fish Effect or the Universal Translator Phenomenon, but the Babel Fish Effect won the democratic vote by a narrow margin.

Arthur noticed early on that there were distinct patterns in the kinds of people who were arriving in the cottage garden and the scientists put their energies into confirming that too. For a start, there were too many scientists. Oh, they were the minority. But still, there were far too many of them. There were also too many philosophers, too many people with a history of significant charitable work and too many people who engaged in some kind of contemplative practice. To borrow the phrase the scientists themselves used it wasn’t ‘representative of the general population on Earth’.

Religious affiliation was the stand-out pattern, or rather, the lack of it. There were atheists, agnostics, spiritual naturalists, pantheists and deists in many flavours and varieties. What there wasn’t was a single person who believed in a god who had an ongoing relationship with them. What there wasn’t _at all_ was a single person of faith in any traditional religious sense. Again, the scientists said this was not representative of humanity.

Yet, everybody seemed to be, well, good. Every soul arriving in the garden came with a clear sense of their own moral compass and all of them had tried their very best to follow it their whole life through. Of course, it could be the case that some were morally bankrupt and were simply quite skilfully faking it. Yet, with every moment that seemed less likely. The proof is in the pudding, as they say and the new community that they were founding was flourishing. It bristled with a sense of fairness, tolerance and compassion. Issues were openly debated and resolved democratically. New arrivals were welcomed with acceptance and kindness. It was early days, but clearly there was plenty of moral integrity to go round.

Quite obviously, Arthur thought to himself, lack of faith wasn’t enough for a human soul to get sent to the cottage garden. You also had to have led an exemplary life ethically speaking. There were probably still plenty of atheists, agnostics and the irreligious going to Hell. Arthur recalled his argument with Death, his objection to being destined for Hell merely for lacking faith. It seemed that the other arrivals in the garden had also been destined for Hell merely for lacking faith, but, following Arthur’s precedent, were also sent to this cottage garden. Arthur also recalled the criteria that he himself had put forward to Death: valuing of knowledge, freedom and personal agency, asking questions, loving and protecting the world and understanding that you don’t kill children. Was that a factor too? Was Death somehow matching the recently deceased faithless human souls to that criteria? It certainly seemed plausible.

Arthur soon realised that no one else was aware that, but for the recent opening of this strange third option of an afterlife, Hell would have been their destination. Rather, they all seemed to assume that finding oneself in a garden in the physical world was probably something like the normal and natural state of affairs after Death. Not surprisingly, given the kind of people ending up in the garden, no one was looking to explain their circumstances through supernatural explanations, religious ideas or mythological concepts. The topic of Hell hadn’t come up.

The fact that no one else realised how narrowly they had escaped an eternity of torment gave Arthur pause. After some reflection, he decided to keep that piece of information to himself until the new community found its feet and until they had a better sense of where they currently were and what it meant. As greatly as Arthur valued knowledge, he also understood the value of care and timeliness in its delivery. It seemed too shocking a detail to release into their vulnerable new community too soon. Arthur was determined to time it right.

The latest community meeting—they were having several a day, there was, after all, little else to do, a constant stream of new arrivals and plenty to discuss— had focussed on the possibility of communication, of reaching out in some way to a traveller on the country road. It was a bracing thought. But given the fact that they could neither leave the garden nor physically touch anything no one had any good ideas about how to do it.

As Arthur drifted about in the lavender he thought that perhaps they were going about it all wrong. They were focussed on the road because they had sighted someone there. But, the cottage although clearly currently empty, was just as clearly normally occupied. In fact, if you peeked into the living room windows from the rose garden you could see a teapot, cup and the remains of a discarded breakfast on the table. Who lived in this cottage? When would they return? And were they key to understanding why they were being sent here, to this garden in particular? Arthur decided that he would raise it at the next meeting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Genesis 6:1-4.  
> When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, "My Spirit will not content with men forever, for he is mortal, his days will be a hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. 
> 
> One possible interpretation of this passage is that 'sons of God' refers to angels and the Nephilim are the children of angels and humans. In line with this interpretation, it has been suggested that destroying the Nephilim may have been part of the reason for The Flood. In Good Omens, The Flood is not worldwide, it is local, so this explanation makes some sense. It also gives a neat explanation for witchcraft.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. To survive their forty days, they have both gotten jobs. Lil works with Ethan washing dogs in St James Park. 
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale have found an alternative power source for their miracles: Earth.
> 
> Arthur Sinclair is the first human soul to be sent to a third destination after death. This destination turned out to be a cottage garden. Many souls have joined him and they all lack faith.
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device is completing her European tour in Paris.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty three days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

The journey back to South Downs was considerably faster than the journey to London had been. Crowley could, once again, push the Bentley miraculously beyond its own top speed, artfully arranging the traffic conditions ahead of himself as he went. He could and he relished in it.

Aziraphale gripped onto his seat, ‘Dear, please. We are still getting used to performing miracles in this manner. We shouldn’t take unnecessary risks.’

‘I know what I’m doing, angel,’ Crowley replied, waving Aziraphale’s concerns away.

‘Hands on the wheel, Crowley!’

Crowley snorted. But, in spite of his objections, Aziraphale was gratified to notice that he did slow down a fraction.

London gave way to the rolling green hills of the English countryside and they were soon careening along the familiar little country road towards to their own cottage. As Aziraphale caught sight of it in the distance he sighed in relief, and not just because the journey was nearly over. As much as he loved his Bookshop and always would, the cottage was their home.

Crowley grinned as he pulled in, parking the Bentley. He jumped out and ran around to the passenger door, opening it for Aziraphale. As Aziraphale exited, Crowley clicked his fingers miracling his new wardrobe and Aziraphale’s books into their home. There was always a steady stream of books going to and fro between the cottage and the Bookshop. This time the selection was focussed on any books Aziraphale thought might prove useful as they grappled with the new realities of what being their own side truly meant. Oh, and the usual top-up of his selection of novels, naturally.

The moment they opened the cottage door Aziraphale miracled away the—now quite foul—remains of his discarded breakfast and put on the kettle, ‘Tea, dear?’

Crowley grunted in reply as Aziraphale fussed about with the kettle and the china, digging away in the cupboard for a packet of biscuits. Crowley threw his sunglasses onto the counter and moved towards the living room’s glass doors— the ones that opened up to their garden—intending to take a little peak through the glass to check on its general state. Had the plants gone wild in his absence? Just how strict was he going to need to be to get them back into line?

What Crowley saw as he gazed out into their garden rooted him to the spot. He stood, frozen in surprise, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly, little meaningless noises occasionally escaping. Crowley specifically tuned in to his ethereal sight for confirmation. Tuned in to the ethereal, the sight was all the more horrifying.

‘A-A-angel?’ Crowley managed to choke out.

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Aziraphale!’ Crowley shouted his voice twisting with urgency.

Hearing the note of panic, Aziraphale abandoned the tea and marched straight over to Crowley, ‘Dear, what is it?’ but before Crowley could answer Aziraphale saw for himself exactly what it was.

Aziraphale tuned into his own capacity for ethereal sight, ‘Oh my! But there are multitudes of them! Do you suppose they are lost?’

‘Perhaps? Or been sent?’ Crowley replied, his eyes darting about suspiciously.

‘Why would they send us a multitude of souls?’ Aziraphale asked with a frown.

‘I dunno! Why do they do any of the mad things they do?’ Crowley snapped.

Aziraphale wrung his hands as he tried to puzzle it out. One of the spirits floated right up to the door and began waving, trying to gain their attention. That decided it.

‘Right. Well. I suppose there is only one thing to do,’ Aziraphale opened the door, ‘Hello, good fellow. My name is Aziraphale and this is Crowley,’ Crowley grimaced in the background slipping his sunglasses back on. Aziraphale continued, ‘I imagine you have quite a story for us. But never fear, we will endeavour to assist you to return to wherever you belong.'

If a spirit could be said to smile the spirit smiled, ‘Nice to meet you both. I am Arthur Sinclair, the elected representative of this little community,’ he waved behind himself.

Crowley snorted, ‘you have a system of government? We haven’t been gone a week!’

‘Indeed we do,’ Arthur answered as if Crowley’s question were sincere and politely phrased, ‘Direct democracy with an elected representative. I’m just a figurehead, really. All decisions are made through a democratic vote.’

Aziraphale eyed Crowley with disapproval, ‘Jolly nice to meet you, Arthur, and good to know we are talking to the right er…person. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this. What do you know of why you are all here?’

Arthur nodded, as much as a spirit can be said to nod, ‘well, we were rather hoping you could help us to understand why we are being sent here in particular. I was the first to arrive, you see, in fact, I believe I’m the first person to be sent to an afterlife that isn’t Heaven or Hell. I argued for a third option. Initially Death refused, but then he said a third option had come into being and I was sent here. Seems to have sent a precedent. Please don’t tell the others about the Heaven and Hell bit. It is rather sensitive information, you’ll appreciate, and I’m trying to time it right.’

‘Fuck!’ Crowley screamed, stomping back and forth behind Aziraphale, ‘great big balls of fuck!’

Aziraphale’s eyes darted to the tantrum and back to Arthur. He whispered, ‘Don’t mind him. This is rather a shock, you see. In fact, we’ve had quite a time of in these past few days. He’ll calm down in a moment.’

‘Azrael, you great bastard! Death is a cock, a total cock!’ Crowley continued, arms flailing about.

Arthur Sinclair laughed in amusement, ‘Quite alright. In fact, I am rather inclined to agree.’

‘As am I, but I nevertheless disapprove of the language,’ Aziraphale tutted, frowning at Crowley in disapproval.

‘But don’t you see?’ Crowley continued in his rant, waving his arms dramatically, ‘don’t you see what Death has done, the bastard?’

‘Yes I do,’ Aziraphale answered with deliberate calm, smoothing down his jacket, ‘ _our own side_ , in every metaphysical sense. We simply hadn’t considered this one.’

‘We don’t recruit!’ Crowley yelled, pulling Aziraphale around and staring into his eyes, ‘We were never meant to recruit. Our own side is you and me, angel! You and me against the world. It was meant to be us finally being together fully, getting up to mischief together, hatching glorious plans to stick it up both Heaven and Hell, you getting yourself into ridiculous trouble doing it,’ Crowley slipped into an over-the-top camp Aziraphale impersonation, ‘oh Crowley save me,’ Aziraphale frowned and Crowley returned to his usual voice, ‘and me swooping in to save you, whisking you away for a nice meal and a good f…’

‘Crowley!’ Aziraphale interrupted, his face quite pink, ‘please…’

Arthur chuckled softly.

Crowley sighed. He looked into Aziraphale’s eyes pleadingly, ‘we don’t recruit, angel.’

‘I know, dear. But here we are and we shall need to make the best of it,’ Aziraphale said with decisively, unhooking Crowley’s hands from his jacket and smoothing it down.

Crowley groaned.

‘Now,’ Aziraphale said, still fiddling with his clothes, ‘the first thing we need to consider is: how long do we have before Heaven notices? The Archangels are sticklers when it comes to records. I don’t imagine we shall have long before they notice that some of the souls they considered captured for Heaven are not actually appearing there.’

‘Oh fuck!’ Crowley cried as he began furiously pacing behind Aziraphale again.

‘I don’t think that will be a problem,’ Arthur Sinclair said, ‘I haven’t explained this to the others but until Death realised there was a third option I was destined for Hell. I think we all were.’

‘Ah,’ Aziraphale nodded, shifting uncomfortably and fidgeting with his hands.

‘Hell ‘s appalling at record-keeping. Never check up. That’s something,’ Crowley said, ceasing his pacing to glare at Arthur.

‘If you please, there’s a clear pattern in the souls that are arriving here. None of us have, well, _faith_. There are atheists, agnostics, spiritual naturalists, pantheists and deists. But absolutely none of us put our faith in any kind of a personal god. Yet, we are also all, well, good people I suppose. Good enough, I suspect, to have secured a place in Heaven but for our lack of faith.’

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale let out a great sigh and visibly relaxed, adjusting his bow tie, ‘well now that’s a condition I’m quite familiar with,’ his eyes darted to Crowley and he smiled with warm affection.

Crowley rolled his eyes and shook his head. He turned to Arthur, ‘What do you expect us to do with you?’

‘I don’t think we expect you to do anything with us,’ Arthur answered, ‘We have developed a democratic system of government. We are quite capable of finding our own place in the universe and advocating for ourselves. We needn’t be a burden.’

‘Not a burden? You are literally all floating about in _our_ garden!’ Crowley shouted, waving towards the multitude of souls outside.

‘A fact over which we have no control,’ Arthur countered firmly, ‘The point is, we have no intention of _adding_ to your burden. However, a collaboration, if you like, would be useful. We would particularly appreciate information. We have a rather high number of scientists in our fold. They have been experimenting enthusiastically but I suspect a few conversations with both of you will have us zooming ahead in leaps and bounds. For a start, you clearly know why we’ve been sent here. Perhaps, we could even be of assistance to you?’

Crowley snorted, folding his arms across his chest.

‘Yes, that makes good sense. Let’s talk it all out and see what we can come up with,’ Aziraphale nodded, ‘don’t you think so, Crowley?’

Crowley shrugged and shook his head, resigning himself to it all reluctantly, ‘Yeah, sure, why not? If I’m going to live with an infestation of souls in my garden I may as well get to know them. I need a drink for this, angel.’

Crowley stomped off to the kitchen in search of a bottle of wine.

Aziraphale smiled at Arthur apologetically, ‘he’s just a bit stressed. He’s rather lovely, really.’ 

Arthur chuckled, ‘I’m sure. He called you angel. Is that a pet name or are you actually an angel?’

‘A bit of both I suppose,’ Aziraphale said blushing slightly, ‘I am a principality.’

‘Which is?’

‘Oh. A type of angel.’

Crowley returned, scowling, with a bottle of red and two glasses.

‘And is your partner an angel too?’ Arthur asked, glancing at Crowley.

Aziraphale preened at the use of the word partner. Crowley snorted at the question and started pouring the wine.

‘Well, Crowley was an angel _originally_. But dear Crowley here may have um…’

‘Sauntered vaguely downwards,’ Crowley interjected as he miracled the couch over to the door and slouched on it, ‘asked too many questions.’

‘Yes, quite,’ Aziraphale said with a soft, fond smile, perching primly on the couch next to Crowley, ‘Crowley is a demon: for a long time he was my rather brilliant and wily adversary. Certainly kept me on my toes!’ Aziraphale’s eyes lit up and he wiggled in excitement, ‘well, in the Beginning, in Eden, he was a wily old Serpent, you should have seen him then he...’

‘Sh, angel,’ Crowley whispered, his ears pink.

‘Serpent?’ repeated Arthur. He didn’t have much knowledge of religion but he did know the basics, ‘Wait. Are you saying Crowley was the Serpent in Eden? The whole tempting with the apple thing?’

Aziraphale beamed proud, ‘he was!’

Crowley, ears still pink, made a little embarrassed yet gratified noise.

‘But do you mean to say the creation story—Adam and Eve, the garden, a snake— it is true?’

Crowley nodded and took a swig of wine, ‘Yeah, pretty much.’

‘While the gist is true, there are quite a number of inaccuracies I’m afraid,’ Aziraphale said, correcting Crowley’s sweeping statement based on very little, Crowley had never actually read the Bible, ‘the Bible is, well, the _human_ version of the events, recorded as best humans could, based on the knowledge they had, often hundreds of years after the events. But, yes it did begin with a garden, Adam and Eve, a Serpent, and an apple…’

‘And an angel who gave away his flaming sword…’ Crowley added with a crooked smile, looking to Aziraphale, ‘that’s always been my favourite bit.’

Aziraphale flushed and fussed about with his bow tie.

‘I’ll be honest, religion has never really been my thing but I don’t remember that bit,’ Arthur said.

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale said, blushing, ‘that was one of the details they didn’t get quite right.’

‘What?!’ Crowley said instantly outraged, ‘you never told me that! What does it say, angel?’

‘Well, in fairness, I wasn’t supposed to give the flaming sword away, I was supposed to use it to guard the garden and the Tree of Life as it says… though it is a little embarrassing that they’ve called me a Cherubim… I did attempt a few corrections at once stage…’

‘The human race just forgot that the Angel of the Eastern Gate gave them his flaming sword?!’ Crowley snorted, ‘Ungrateful sods!’

Aziraphale shrugged, his cheeks flushed pink with pleasure at Crowley’s reaction. He honestly didn’t mind the human race forgetting. But he did appreciate Crowley’s outrage on his behalf. He cleared his throat, ‘Anyway, all of that was very long ago. We aren’t exactly an angel and a demon anymore. Or if we are, we are the angel and demon of Earth. We have fully severed our connections to Heaven and Hell, and become our own side. I believe we began the process with our actions during Armageddon, but it only came to full fruition recently. And I think it is this transformation that has resulted in your arrival here.’

‘Armageddon?’ Arthur said with shock and confusion, ‘as I said, my knowledge of religion is a bit shaky. But isn’t that meant to come at the end?’

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale took a sip of wine, ‘well, let me explain…’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty three days until The Big One**

**St James Park, London**

Lil laughed as she ran with Molly through the park. She leapt over branches and darted around trees. Molly followed at times and led Lil at times. And then Lil didn’t see a particular branch, sticking out slightly in the grass and she tripped over, landing with a splat.

‘Ow!’

Molly, bright dog that she was, instantly knew the game had ended. She ran up to Lil and sniffed down her body as if examining it for injuries.

‘I’m alright, Molly,’ Lil grumbled, ‘just hurt my dignity.’

Molly wagged her tail and barked as if in agreement.

Lil pulled herself up to sitting. Yeah, she was alright. Good thing too. She couldn’t miraculously heal in her current state. A broken bone would be most inconvenient. Molly rushed forward and began licking Lil all over her face.

‘Geroff, you big buffoon,’ Lil said giggling all the while.

Lil sighed and lay down on the soft grass. Molly lay with her. The sun peaked through the clouds, beams of sunlight fingering the leaves above them as they shifted and danced in the breeze. Lil stroked Molly’s soft chocolate fur and she was struck with the perfect knowledge that this, this is what life should be. Yes, Eden was definitely this.

‘Tell you a secret, Molly,’ Lil whispered, ‘My sister and I have to re-make the world. Figure out where it all went wrong and make it right. It is our destiny, our divine duty. I reckon, I think, I’ll remake it just like this. What do you think?’

Molly barked and licked Lil’s face.

‘I said geroff!’

Molly sat back down and let Lil stroke her fur again.

‘Tell you something else. I’ve never been this happy before. Not even in Heaven,’ Lil licked her lips, ‘that doesn’t seem right, does it?’

Molly barked and licked Lil’s face.

‘Stop it!’ Lil said giggling, ‘right we better get you to your wash.’

Ethan laughed when he saw Lil and Molly approach.

‘Maybe we should put you in the machine, Lil! You need it more!’

‘Oh very funny,’ Lil replied with a scowl.

‘Did Molly throw the stick for you?’

‘Oh, shut up!’

‘Actually I think you caught it in your hair,’ Ethan said leaning forward and carefully pulling a stick out of Lil’s messy raven-black hair.

Lil looked into Ethan’s eyes and for a moment time seemed to freeze and then restart. If Lil hadn’t been temporarily powerless she’d have wondered if she’d accidentally performed a miracle. Ethan coughed and moved away.

‘Anyway,’ Ethan said, ‘feel free to jump into the machine or,’ he deftly disconnected water tank’s hose and waved it about, ‘I could just turn on the water and you could have a shower.’

Lil snorted. She pretended to ignore him, focussing on Molly. Ethan smiled as he reconnected the hose and moved to the other side of the machine to turn the water supply on for Molly’s wash.

Lil was fast. She disconnected the hose and rammed it into Ethan’s face just as he turned the water back on.

Ethan’s eyes went wide with shock. He tried to speak, but he choked on a face full of water instead. He tried to move forward, against the stream, and ended up falling backwards on his arse.

‘I grew up with devils. I’ve bested imps. Don’t challenge me unless you are prepared to lose!’ Lil cried out.

Molly leapt around her barking joyfully.

‘Oh you total shit!’ Ethan cried out leaping sideways and going for the hose.

They wrestled over the hose, both ending up soaked as Molly bounced around them barking. Finally Ethan realised that his best strategy was to turn the water back off. He ran back to that side of the machine and flicked the switch. The water instantly dried up.

Lil shrugged and reconnected the hose.

‘You absolute shit!’ Ethan said with a laugh.

‘I won,’ Lil said with a smile.

Ethan laughed. He stumbled over to Lil and bowed with mock gravity, ‘I concede to you, my good lady. You are the better person.’

‘Indeed I am,’ Lil smirked, ‘and you are the wetter person.’

‘That’s terrible,’ Ethan said with a laugh and a shake of his head, ‘don’t go into comedy.’

‘I know, but Evie would have liked it,’ Lil said with a smile. ‘Evie’s my sister,’ Lil added to explain.

Ethan smiled, ‘you have a sister?’

‘Yeah, a twin, actually.’

‘Really? Identical or?’

‘Identical. We live together.’

‘Interesting. Lil, I um…I’d like to…get to know you better, maybe we could…’

Molly barked and Ethan followed her gaze. There was a walk-in: a woman with a tight smile and a fancy looking poodle. She tutted at their appearance and spoke with a harsh clipped tone of contempt, ‘are you still washing dogs today?’

‘Oh yeah, sorry, little accident with the hose,’ Ethan said sheepishly.

They washed the poodle and Molly and Lil took Molly home. Later on, as Lil travelled back to her flat on the London Underground she wondered what exactly Ethan had been going to ask. For some strange reason her heart began to thump hard in her chest, just as it had done when she was racing with Molly.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty three days until The Big One**

**Eiffel Tower, Paris**

Morgan Pulsifier-Device adjusted her back pack and looked up, her eyes following the iconic tower to the very top. Paris was the final stop in her grand European adventure and today was her final day. Tomorrow she’d be boarding a plane for home. Her mum and dad would meet her at the airport. It would be all hugs, excitement and celebrations. The difficult bit would come next: The Decision (in her head at least it had long since become capitalised).

Come tomorrow, there would be no further delaying it. Morgan had a choice to make and it was a big one, so big it made her dizzy and paralysed her in indecision. The choice was this: just what was she going to do with the rest of her life? Would she follow in her mum’s footsteps and get a PhD? And if so, at which university? Or should she try to do something practical with the IT qualifications she already had? Go for an IT job? Or start her own business? Or perhaps she should properly study the occult as she’d always wanted to? Not much paying work in it, but still. It was an option. And then there was the question of where she should live. Should she move to London? Or even to America? Should she connect with her extended family there? She knew they’d welcome her with open arms. Or should she simply stick to the farm helping dad with the goats, the guests and the lavender? In short, just what the hell was she going to do with her life?

Morgan was at a loss. The Decision loomed before her, overwhelming in its scale, threatening to crush her. How was she to decide? Who was she to know what would make her happy? And yet, decide she must. And yet, how could she? She only had one life. She had such a limited amount of time. She had to get it all right.

Morgan consciously put The Decision aside. That was for tomorrow. For today she had one thing to conquer and she’d deliberately left it to the end: the Eiffel Tower. She was going to climb it.

As Morgan walked around the Tower to find the queue to climb it she found something quite unexpected: a young man in a suit holding a box and a sign saying ‘Morgaine Pulsifier’. Morgan stopped and stared. It wasn’t actually her name but… how much closer could you get? The man was scanning the crowds, clearly looking for someone, clearly looking for Morgaine Pulsifier. He spotted Morgan’s double take and moved straight over to her, ‘Morgan?’ he asked with a British accent, ‘Morgan Pulsifier? I may not be pronouncing it correctly.’

Morgan gulped, ‘I’m Morgan Pulsifier-Device,’

The man smiled and nodded, ‘Oh, yes. Close enough,’ he sighed in relief, ‘They said you wouldn’t be here. You just won me a very lucrative bet young lady. This is for you.’

Morgan frowned in confusion, ‘What?’

‘I’m a solicitor,’ the man explained, ‘this package, has been in our firm’s possession for over three hundred years. There were two originally actually, the first was delivered some thirty years ago by Mr Baddicombe. And I’m delivering the second one to you now.’

‘What is it?’ Morgan asked, taking the box.

‘Dunno,’ the man said shaking his head and backing away, ‘Don’t want to know. Horrible stuff happens to everyone who tries to find out and that’s enough to put me off. Good luck.’

With that he strode off.

‘But wait? You can’t just?’ Morgan called out after him but it he didn’t turn around. He quickly disappeared into the crowd of tourists and was gone.

Morgan sighed. She moved to a quiet spot and opened the box carefully. Inside was a book. Morgan read the title to herself in a soft whisper, ‘Further Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Concerning the Worlde that is to Com. Ye Saga Continues!’ Morgan sighed, running her hand over the cover, ‘Oh, fuck!’

Morgan opened the book, flicking to the first page and read:

‘Though a chaine may be brokene

It may yet be reforged

Seize thy destinie Morgaine Pulsifier.’

Morgan has never climbed the Eiffel Tower.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. To survive their forty days, they have both gotten jobs. Evie works at The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, as a Wellness Facilitator. 
> 
> Crowley and Aziraphale have discovered that Arthur Sinclair and other human souls lacking in faith but with ample moral integrity are finding their way to their garden after death. 
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was given Agnes Nutter's second book of prophesies on her final day in Paris.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty days until The Big One**

**The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, London**

Evie found Glenn and Fiona in the community room, chatting over cups of tea.

‘Evie,’ Glenn called out, beckoning her over, ‘C’m here. Topic of discussion today is religion. What do you think?’

‘What…what do I think about what?’ Evie stuttered, her eyes big and round, as she tried to understand the question.

‘Religion, of course,’ Glenn replied with a frown.

‘Oh Glenn, you doofus. You’ve given her no context at all. What do you expect?’ Fiona said with a tut, ‘I was just telling Glenn here that I’ve started reading the Bible again for the first time in many years. Glenn’s an atheist.’

‘Agnostic,’ corrected Glenn.

‘Oh?’ Fiona asked eyebrows raised.

‘I think there could be a God. I really do. Plausible enough. But if there is a God he’s just like a really advanced alien life form. Like, maybe we are cattle and he’s raising us for slaughter and that’s what death is. Or maybe he’s a scientist and we are like mould growing in a Petri dish.’

Evie’s mouth felt suddenly dry and her head spun. She’d never heard anyone talking about God quite like this. Not even the demons talked like this. From what Evie and Lil had managed to piece together, living in Heaven and Hell, no one had heard from the Almighty directly for a very long time. Of course, the Metatron spoke for God, but that wasn’t the same thing, was it? Could Glenn be right? Evie clutched at the back of a chair. She carefully stepped around it and slid down into a sitting position in the chair. She took several deep shuddering breaths.

‘That’s a bit morbid isn’t it?’ Fiona said with a frown, ‘cattle raised for slaughter?’

Glenn shrugged, ‘Makes sense to me.’

‘But do you think God loves us?’ Fiona posed.

‘Not anymore than a scientist might love the mould growing in a Petri dish or a farmer might love the cattle he wants to turn into beef. What do you think, Evie?’

Evie was startled, the question pulling her out of her own shocking chain of thought. Without actually thinking about it she found herself rattling off a reply automatically, like a robot with the right button pushed, ‘God doesn’t play dice with the universe.’

Evie paused a moment adding, ‘It’s ineffable.’

‘What does that mean?’ Glenn said with a confused frown.

‘It means incapable of being understood or expressed verbally,’ Fiona explained to Glenn, a little frown creasing her wrinkled face as she contemplated Evie’s state.

‘I know what the word means!’ Glenn countered, ‘What do _you_ mean, Evie?’

‘I- I- it’s,’ Evie stuttered her heart thumping in her chest and her stomach twisting into hard knots—fuck, what do I mean?—she swallowed hard, swallowing down the rising sense of nausea, ‘it’s um it’s ineffable…’

‘Well, that’s cleared things up,’ Glenn snorted.

Fiona was still looking carefully at Evie, taking in her state and making her deductions.

‘I agree with Evie,’ Fiona declared replacing her cup in its saucer with a delicate clink, ‘there are some things that just can’t be explained. And when we try we only get a tiny hint at the bigger picture. Like, maybe there’s something, some loving, protective powerful force and all the religions of the world are glimpsing it, trying to get hints of it but getting it all a bit muddled at the same time. It is like that story about the elephant: someone’s got hold of its trunk, someone has its foot and someone it’s tail and everyone is talking and disagreeing about what’s what because no one can see the whole elephant.’

‘Or maybe it’s just a game,’ countered Glenn, ‘maybe the force is just playing with us, perhaps we are just pieces in some massive cosmic game of chess.’

Silence fell as they all contemplated this. Evie could hear the whoosh of her heart beat in her ears. If it is a game: who exactly is playing? The humans? The angels and the demons? And what counts as winning? Does anyone but God herself know? Her mind was whirring with thoughts, with questions she’d never thought of before, questions that had previously been unaskable, unthinkable. She felt like a carefully constructed dam inside her own mind had broken and she was being swept away in the resulting wave.

‘Anyway, how about an actual game of chess?’ Glenn continued in an upbeat voice.

Fiona laughed and nodded as Glenn set up the board. Her eyes continued to flick back to Evie though and she hummed to herself as she watched her.

Evie stood up carefully. Her legs were like jelly and it took her a few tries.

‘Alright, Evie?’ Fiona asked softly as Glenn kept setting up the board.

Evie nodded.

‘You need a nurse?’ Glenn asked with a confused frown, suddenly realising from Fiona’s attentions to Evie that Evie wasn’t quite herself.

‘She just needs a moment, Glenn,’ Fiona said with a soft smile.

‘Yeah,’ Evie said, standing up, ‘just need some air. I’m alright.’

She moved on—still feeling shaken— to check on her other patients, setting up a VR experience for one and organising a video call for another. A bit later in her shift, Fiona saw her walking past and called out to her from her unit. Evie came in and found Fiona sitting in a chair strumming a guitar.

‘That’s right,’ Evie said with smile, ‘you were in a band, weren’t you?’

‘Oh yes,’ Fiona said, ‘never made it big though. But big enough to tour and have some fun. They were good days.’

Fiona kept strumming out the chords almost absent-mindedly and Evie felt herself sway subtly to the rhythm. Evie didn’t have a lot of experience with music, apart from celestial harmonies, The Sound of Music soundtrack and the wild beats that the demons liked to dance to, but she found Fiona’s playing soothed and relaxed her.

‘You come from a religious family, huh?’ Fiona said, watching Evie carefully, ‘have I got that right?’

Evie laughed at Fiona’s deduction, ‘you could say that. As religious as they come really.’

Fiona nodded, ‘me too. Born again fundamentalists. The kind who think the end of the world is nigh and they are going to be taken up in glorious rapture.’

‘Oh,’ was the only response Evie could come up with. After all, Fiona’s parents had been right. Sort of.

‘You too, huh? Thought so,’ Fiona said, putting her own interpretation on Evie’s response. She kept playing, finishing the song. Then she paused. ‘I do agree with what you said about ineffability though,’ she sighed, putting the guitar down beside her, ‘you’ve gotta sift through it yourself, separate out the good bits, keep them and throw away the rest, you know?’

‘Um… I think so?’ Evie said with hesitation. Although moments ago that had been unthinkable now it sounded right. It sounded very right. Ineffably right. Surely, that was the very point of these forty days? Evie and Lil had to work out a solution because Heaven and Hell didn’t know one. So, of course, they needed to ask questions, learn from humanity and come to new and startling conclusions. Was that what the Archangels, the Metatron, Lord Beelzebub and the Dark Council expected? They certainly wanted them to come up with a fix, a solution to the problem of the World. But what if they didn’t like the solution that Evie and Lil came up with? Evie shivered, thinking of Archangel Gabriel’s mouth curled in anger, his violet eyes burning with wrath. After a long pause she added, ‘I don’t think they’d like that.’

Fiona laughed, ‘Your family? Of course they won’t. But whose life is it?’

Evie nodded at this remarkable pronouncement— _whose life is it_ — and turned to leave, dizzy, disoriented and near terrified at the yawning possibilities Fiona seemed to easily open up in front of her. Fiona called her back. 

‘Here,’ Fiona said holding out a Bible, an actual paper book, ‘take it. I have a couple. Read it. But read it for yourself this time, huh? And when you have, come and talk to me about it, alright? I’d like that. I’m trying to figure it all out again too, in light of, you know, rapidly approaching death.’ Fiona laughed.

Evie stumbled out, clutching at the Bible. Of course. Of course she should read it. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? The human version of events. It wasn’t read in Heaven and Hell, unless you count angels and demons occasionally skimming through it to find themselves. But reading the human version of events could only help Evie to understand how exactly the world had gone so wrong. It may not be what Archangels, the Metatron, Lord Beelzebub and the Dark Council expected them to do but it was clearly the way forward, the way to finding a solution. Was the Almighty herself leading the way? Evie shivered and held the Bible close, over her heart.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty days until The Big One**

**The garden of a cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

‘All of the dinosaurs though? Diplodocus and troodon and stegosaurus? All of them?’

‘It isn’t just dinosaurs,’ another Spirit interrupted, ‘all of the ancient creatures. You’ve got the pterosaurs—pterodactylus and quetzalcoatlus and all the rest—the marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and mosasaurus and that’s just the Mesozoic era. What about all the strange and wonderful life that existed between the Cambrian explosion and the Great Dying? The trilobites, the armoured fish like dunkleosteus, the synapsids like dimetrodon and edaphosaurus. And I haven’t even mentioned the plants! Are you really saying that _all_ of those fossils are fake?’

Crowley nodded and shifted uncomfortably on the garden bench next to Aziraphale. 

‘But why?’ yet another Spirit jumped in.

Crowley’s face screwed up like he tasted something foul, ‘well, we’d always been told it was a joke,’ he looked across to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale nodded primly, hands brushing nervously over his trousers,’Yes, that was always the official position in Heaven as well.’

‘But what about carbon dating?’ a spirit asked.

‘It was a really elaborate joke?’ Crowley said with a little awkward laugh, ‘look, the thing about the Almighty is…she’s um, angel, how would you explain it?’

‘Ineffable,’ Aziraphale answered at once.

Crowley frowned as if that didn’t quite cover what he was thinking.

‘Right, ineffable definitely ineffable, also a bit of a bitch,’ Crowley explained, pulling a face. 

Aziraphale fidgeted uncomfortably, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t put it _quite_ like that, dear.’

Crowley raised an eyebrow and stared his angel down.

‘Forget about the damn fossils,’ another Spirit jumped in, ‘what about the age of the universe as calculated from background microwave radiation? Or the fact that the red shift shows that the universe is expanding and hence likely unfolding from a singularity? A singularity that occurred far earlier than 6000 years ago. How can all of that be billions of years out?’

‘It really is a very elaborate joke…’ Crowley said, arms spread wide.

A number of the Spirits burst into tears and their ghostly sobs rang out across the garden.

‘Oh dear,’ Aziraphale said fussing with his clothes, ‘this is clearly quite a distressing topic.’

‘I’m sorry,’ one of the sobbing spirits spluttered through ghostly tears, ‘I’m a p-p-palaeontologist. My whole career was… was a joke.’

‘Awkward…’ Crowley whispered to Aziraphale who hummed in agreement.

Arthur Sinclair floated forward, ‘Perhaps it is time to bring this meeting of the Literal Creationism is True Despite Overwhelming Evidence to the Contrary Support Group to a close. Let’s thank Aziraphale and Crowley for their time. It is all a bit of a shock but I think we are grateful to know the truth.’

The spirits clapped and several muttered out thank-yous in between gasps of tears. Aziraphale and Crowley nodded politely and escaped.

When they were safely back inside the sanctuary of their cottage, they both sighed in relief.

Crowley flicked his sunglasses off and Aziraphale began twisting his hands in worry, ‘They’ve all had the ground torn out from under their feet. Nothing is as they thought it was. It is such an adjustment. I wish there was more we could do.’

Crowley remembered Aziraphale’s own adjustment to living without Heaven. After the initial giddy happiness of surviving and the heady freedom of being able to actually express their feelings for each other, there had been a certain amount of despair, and well, adjustment. Especially for Aziraphale. Crowley had suggested that they spend some time recovering in South Downs for a reason. And that had worked, hadn’t it? Worked so well they’d settled in here.

‘What they need is time, angel. They’ll adjust,’ Crowley said his golden eyes softening. He added in a whisper, ‘we did.’

Aziraphale nodded and smiled at Crowley with warm affection. He took Crowley’s hands in his own and kissed them, ‘I owe you so much, my dear.’

‘Ngh.’

‘I do,’ Aziraphale emphasised, leaning forward and giving Crowley a gentle kiss on the mouth.

‘Love you, angel,’ Crowley whispered as the kiss ended and he found his voice again.

‘I love you too, my dear,’ Aziraphale whispered back, his eyes crinkling with a smile.

Aziraphale brushed Crowley’s crimson locks back, behind his ears. Aziraphale sighed, ‘they need that too: love.’

Crowley made an incomprehensible sound of agreement.

Crowley kissed Aziraphale once more and then broke away to fetch a bottle of wine from the kitchen. He opened the wine and poured a glass for each of them. Aziraphale settled on their couch and Crowley slouched beside him, passing him his wine, ‘Makes you wonder though. Why did the Almighty plant all those fossils? And everything else the whole,’ Crowley gestured wildly, ‘radiation thing? It is almost like she wanted people like that,’ Crowley gestured to the garden with his wine glass nearly spilling the red wine everywhere, ‘to end up in Hell.’

‘Surely not,’ Aziraphale replied stiffly, ‘That’s… I mean…that wouldn’t be…’ he stopped suddenly as realisation hit. A smile formed, and he shifted from downcast to positively glowing, ‘Crowley! But they didn’t end up in Hell, they ended up here… Oh Crowley, what if they were meant to come to us?’

‘Meant as in the great ineffable plan meant?’ Crowley asked sceptically.

Aziraphale nodded, biting his lower lip and wiggling in excitement.

Crowley snorted, gave it some thought, and then shrugged, ‘Dunno. Maybe? I wouldn’t put anything past her.’ 

Aziraphale’s eyes sparkled as he repeated gleefully, ‘Maybe, just maybe, they were _meant_ to come to us.’

‘Which makes you what exactly? The Angel of the Agnostics and Atheists? The Pantheists’ Principality? Guardian to the Garden of the Faithless?’ Crowley said with a dramatic sweeping gesture, nearly spilling his wine again.

‘Yes, yes perhaps it does,’ Aziraphale said with a determined glint in his eye, ‘perhaps that’s exactly what I am. After all I’ve loved you—a demon, the Serpent of Eden— all this time, haven’t I?’

Crowley froze for a moment. ‘Well,’ he snorted, ‘it is ineffable, I’ll grant you that.’

Aziraphale beamed, glowing with such happiness, Crowley was catching glimpses of his halo in the fading sunlight. 

‘Anyway,’ Aziraphale said definitely, ‘Garden of the Faithless Good would be a more accurate name. Plenty of atheists, agnostics and generally irreligious and faithless people are still ending up in Hell I am quite sure. Only the faithless who meet Heaven’s strict ethical criteria are ending up here. That’s quite a different matter.’

Crowley downed the rest of his wine in a single gulp.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Thirty days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Morgan read and re-read the book of prophesy. But she did it secretly. First in Paris, and then late at night hidden in her bedroom. She didn’t mention it to her parents straight away. She tried. But she looked into her mother’s eyes, shining with the delight of having her only child back home and she just couldn’t do it to her. Her mum had considered completing the prophesies of Agnes Nutter a liberation. Morgan had heard enough from her mum and dad over the years to know that. What would she do if she found out there was a second book?

So Morgan pretended that she’d been sick on her final day of her trip, that that was the reason why she had no photos of the Paris skyline from the top of the Eiffel Tower. She regaled her parents with stories of her travels, deftly batted away questions about what exactly she was going to do next, helped her father with the goats and helped them both in the kitchen, cooking and eating as a family again. It was fun. It was comfortable. But the prophesies gnawed deep inside her, demanding to be solved. She knew she couldn’t keep holding out.

When her mum was next out of the house—Anathema was giving a lecture on the history of the doo-whacky and then meeting with several PhD students—Morgan decided it was time to confess everything to her dad. She raised the topic while they were tending to the goats.

‘Dad, what if Agnes Nutter wrote a second book of prophesy?’

Morgan was not prepared for the look of shock that swept across his father’s face, ‘A second book?’ he laughed with a note of hysteria, ‘what would make you think there might be a second book?’

Morgan’s eyes narrowed shrewdly.

‘You look so much like your mother when you do that,’ Newt said with a gulp, knowing he’d been found out.

‘There _is_ a second book,’ Morgan said, eyes narrowed, ‘But you already knew that.’

‘Was, sweetpea. There _was_ a second book. We destroyed it. But how do you know?’

‘There was another copy,’ Morgan said with a smile, ‘I have it. It was delivered to me in Paris.’

Newton blew out a long breath, trying unsuccessfully to calm down, ‘Right. Right. A second copy. Of course there is. A second blasted copy and of course you have it. Right. Well.’

Newton paced nervously, the little goats running around him and occasionally testing out their head butting skills on each other or on Newton’s legs. 

‘Right. Well. Right,’ Newt said eventually, ‘Here’s the plan. I’m going to put the kettle on. You are going to tell me what exactly is going on. And then we’ll both figure out how to tell your mother,’ Newt paused as inspiration struck, ‘oh! Or we destroy the book before she gets home and never tell her. Yes. Maybe,’ he grimaced, ‘Oh but if she ever found out you had a second copy I never told her… I’m getting ahead of myself. First thing’s first: the kettle.’

The goats were coaxed back into their pen and Newt put the kettle on. Over two cups of tea, Morgan explained everything, bringing out the book to show her dad.

Newt sighed, ‘The thing is sweetpea, when I first met your mum, she was a professional descendant. Following these prophesies was her life. It was what she was raised for. Her passion was the history of inventions so universally useful that the inventor was forgotten, inventions like the thing-a-me-bobs and what’s-it’s. She was so passionate about it she'd managed to a PhD in it. The thing was, she never felt truly free, you understand? She was constantly at the beck and call of a witch long dead. We destroyed the second book so your mum could be free, so she could have her own life. And look at her now! She has a flourishing academic career in the history of universally useful inventions. She's happy. I don’t want to see her trapped again. And I don’t want that happening to you.’

Morgan nodded, chewing on her bottom lip. She swirled the remains of her tea in her teacup, ‘I know. I get it. But, dad, did you read the book before you destroyed it?’

Newt shook his head.

‘Well, I’ve read it. And it is already clear to me that some pretty big stuff is going to happen. And it is going to happen soon, really soon. Thirty years ago you and mum played an important role in saving the world. What if I have a role to play too?’

Newt chewed at his cheek and sipped his tea. He put his tea cup back into the saucer with a chink, ‘Nutter’s prophesies are very difficult to interpret. You are right on top of them before they start to make real sense.’

Morgan sighed, ‘But, listen. I think something big is going to happen. Just as big as what happened to you and mum. Listen to this,’ Morgan opened the book to the second page and read,

‘Yet thou reprieve be briefe

Two shall rise

Eve’s blood with Adam’s power

Heaven and Helle and Earth

The fate of the world decided

Not thirty years aefter it was to ende.’

Newton sighed, ‘Yeah that sounds like Agnes Nutter alright.’ He finished his tea with a single big gulp. Replacing his cup on the saucer he pushed his glasses up on his nose, looked directly into his daughter’s eyes and said, ‘I have two questions. One: are you doing this because Agnes Nutter is telling you to do it or because _you_ think it is right?’

‘Because I think it is right,’ Morgan answered with quick determination.

‘Good,’ Newton answered with a nod, ‘Hold onto that and don’t ever let it go, no matter how crazy things get and, believe me, if you are right things are going to get pretty crazy.’

Morgan nodded in acknowledgment, ‘Alright.’

Newton sighed a long-suffering sigh, ‘my second question is: how the blazes are we going to tell your mother?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the book it is said that Anathema Device has a PhD in the history of inventions so useful that the inventor is forgotten.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Fiona, one of the residents at The Orchard, has given Evie a Bible and Evie decided that reading the human version of events is probably a good idea.
> 
> Arthur Sinclair and other human souls lacking in faith but with ample moral integrity finding their way to Aziraphale and Crowley's garden after death. Aziraphale has dubbed the place the garden of the faithless good.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty eight days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

‘Watcha reading?’ Lil asked as she scooped marmalade out of the jar with a spoon, peering over at the thick paper book in Evie’s hands.

Evie looked up from the text with narrowed eyes, ‘I think you are meant to put that on toast.’

Lil shrugged, unconcerned.

Evie flipped the cover of the book over and showed Lil the gold lettering on the cover page: Holy Bible.

‘Oh… the human version of events. Watcha reading that for? Humans get it all wrong anyway,’ Lil said, taking another spoonful of marmalade.

‘Exactly!’ Evie replied, ‘If I can understand how they’ve got it all wrong then maybe I can understand how the world’s gone wrong and I’ll know what we can fix.’

Lil’s face scrunched up in thought, ‘Hmm fair enough.’

Lil settled onto the couch next to Evie and ate a few more spoonfuls of marmalade as Evie read, ‘Any good bits?’

Evie sighed, ‘Well, there’s plenty that’s not quite right. Like, they’ll get the basic gist but the details are all wonky. But the humans had to pass the stories down through word of mouth at first, didn’t they? So that’s not surprising.’

‘Plus, they could only write about what they could understand,’ Lil added, with a shrug, ‘you can’t expect them to have understood most of it.’

‘Exactly,’ Evie said, ‘but all of that, the history I suppose, is neither here nor there. The interesting bit, I think, is what they think God wants them to do.’

‘Ah ha,’ Lil nodded along still eating her marmalade, ‘makes sense.’

Evie sighed, ‘The thing is, that bit is very messy. For a start, it is a mass of contradictions. Is it “an eye for an eye” or “turn the other cheek”? Then, there’s some of these rules. Like: Leviticus 19:19 Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. Or Leviticus 19:27 Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.’

Lil snorted with laughter, ‘What? That’s so specific.’

‘I know, right?’ Evie said, ‘or this one: Leviticus 20:13 If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.’

‘That makes absolutely no sense,’ Lil said with a shake of her head, ‘why would God care about that? And putting them to _death_?’

‘Exactly. And oh, there’s a lot of that. I mean, apparently there’s the eye for an eye thing, but death is recommended as punishment for all sorts of stuff,’ Evie replied, ‘And there’s more. Here’s one: Ephesians 6:5 it says: Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Or Peter 3:1 it says: Wives in the same way be submissive to your husbands.’

Lil grimaced in disgust, ‘that’s awful,’ she paused, ‘they’ve definitely screwed it up with some of their own bullshit, huh? Though in fairness to the humans at least some of the screwy rules could have been Sandalphon. He’s a bit weird like that.’

‘True,’ Evie said, wrinkling up his nose, ‘The point is, whatever the cause it makes this all a bit of a mess. Humans don’t know what God wants them to do. Even if you dismiss the obviously ridiculous rules and the stuff that is clearly actually horrible and wrong like slavery, or women obeying their husbands or killing men who sleep with men, and just focus on the stuff that seems to make sense like don’t kill or don’t lie, how can that cherry picking possibly be justified? How do the humans know what rules are from God? How do we?’

Lil shivered. She put the marmalade jar and spoon on the coffee table and turned to her sister, ‘maybe it is meant to be difficult. Like, a test. Maybe if God just gave everyone the correct rules they’d all end up in Heaven and it’d be too easy. So the right rules are mixed in with stupid ones.’

Evie twisted a single black curl around a finger as she considered this, ‘are you saying most humans are meant to fail? Meant to go to Hell?’

Lil shrugged, ‘I dunno.’

Evie shook her head, ‘neither do I. That’s the point.’ Evie frowned. A moment of thoughtful silence passed between them.

Eventually Evie said softly, ‘I wonder what God intended? It is obvious that some of these rules are bullshit. I wonder which of the rules are actually hers?’

Lil shrugged, ‘I dunno, Evie. The big, important ones that seem to make sense, I guess?’

Evie ran her hand over the Bible as if she could feel the answer. The big, important ones. She swallowed hard. ‘How long do you suppose it has been since someone has heard from her?’ she said in a whisper, voicing a question she’d never have dared to ask in Heaven, ‘Directly, I mean?’

‘Directly? As in not through the Metatron? A long time,’ Lil said also slipping into a whisper, ‘I would think it has been a very long time. Uriel let it slip once that she hasn’t even communicated directly with Gabriel or Michael for ages. I tried to push her to be more specific but she clamped right up. The Almighty definitely gave direct orders to multiple angels back at The Beginning. But after that? When exactly did she start talking only through the Metatron? Who knows?’

‘So how do we know what Heaven and Hell think and do is really is coming from her?’ Evie whispered, her heart racing as she gave voice to her newly found doubts, ‘what if Heaven and Hell’s version is just as screwed up as the human version? What if they don’t fully know what God wants them to do either?’

‘Well, fuck. That’s…’ Lil’s eyes widened in shock, her eyes darted around the room, automatically searching for threats, but it was just them. No one was going to attack them for their blasphemy, ‘Evie, if the Archangels heard you talking like that…’

‘I know.’

Lil swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and took a few steadying breaths. She gave it some thought, turned it over carefully in her mind. It made sense of a lot of things. How could Evie and Lil know what God really wanted? They’d never heard from her directly. Eventually Lil croaked out, ‘Could be right though.’

‘I know,’ Evie sighed and reached out to Lil, wrapping her arms around her and hugging her tight. Lil hugged her back furiously. They clung to each other until their fear eased, and even as it eased they held on still.

‘We’re meant to find a solution though, aren’t we? Well, that’s what we’ve been told. A solution no one in Heaven or Hell has. I think we are meant to spend these forty days thinking the unthinkable. How else are we to come up with something new? What Heaven and Hell think must be a bit wrong. What if God wants us to put it right?’ Evie whispered, ‘what if that’s what this is all truly about?’

‘Yeah. Yeah,’ said Lil with a contemplative nod, ‘sounds about right.’

‘Glenn said something interesting,’ Evie continued after a brief pause, ‘you know, at the nursing home.’

‘Hm?’ Lil answered, still reeling from their discussion so far.

‘He said: maybe it is a game, maybe God is playing with us,’ Evie paused letting it sink in, ‘It makes some kind of sense, doesn’t it? Of why she doesn’t interfere anymore? Why no one has heard from her directly in ages? Maybe she’s I dunno, just watching the game play out and seeing how it ends?’

‘You really think that?’ Lil asked with a shiver, ‘that it’s all a game to her?’

‘I don’t know what I think,’ Evie said, chewing on her lower lip, ‘But I’ve never heard from God directly. I want God herself to tell us we are supposed to do.’

‘Yeah,’ Lil said nervously licking her lips, ‘yeah I’d like that too.’

‘And I can’t stop thinking,’ Evie whispered, ‘if it is a game then what counts as winning? What are the rules of the game?’

Lil wrapped her arms around Evie again and squeezed her tightly.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty eight days until The Big One**

**Garden of the Faithless Good, Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

‘Oh, I’m pretty sure you can leave the garden. If you really wanted to and you went about it the right away,’ Aziraphale said, sitting primly on the garden bench.

Crowley, lounging beside Aziraphale, sunglasses in place, stroked his chin in thought, ‘They’d be propelled back before too long. They belong here now. That’s what happens when a soul escapes Hell and mucks about on Earth for a bit. It doesn’t last long.’

‘Oh yes, quite,’ Aziraphale agreed, ‘that’s exactly my point. The spirits within Heaven and Hell are able to have brief encounters with the world. So why not the spirits in our garden?’

Crowley shrugged and nodded, conceding the point.

‘The scientists have performed all kinds of experiments,’ Arthur countered, ‘plus everyone tries to leave at some point early on. No one has succeeded yet. Your fence is insurmountable to us.'

Aziraphale shook his head, ‘Not at all. The trouble is you are still trying to move physically, like physical beings in a physical world. You are trying to climb over the fence, right?’

Arthur nodded as best a spirit can nod, ‘yes I suppose that’s accurate.’ 

‘You are incorporeal,’ Aziraphale explained, ‘It is a whole other way of moving.’

‘But we can move around the garden just fine,’ Arthur countered.

‘Ah. That’s because this is where you belong I suspect,’ Aziraphale said, ‘But outside of here, you are truly incorporeal and will need to navigate the world the incorporeal way.’

‘Which means?’ Crowley asked with a sweeping gesture.

Aziraphale wiggled slightly, ‘Well, I only have a little experience with it I’m afraid. You don’t exactly move in any physical sense. You think of where you want to be and you appear there. No, that isn’t right. It isn’t so much a question of where as a question of who. If someone is open to receiving some kind of message from the spirit world you can, well, tune into them I suppose, and use them as a conduit to manifest at their physical location.’

Arthur floated about in the lavender while he gave this some consideration, ‘and how do we begin to sense these people open to receiving messages from the spirit world?’

‘Ah, there’s a knack to it I’m afraid,’ Aziraphale explained, remembering his experience, ‘Actually, I came upon that later. The easiest thing to do initially is to tune into someone you love.’

Aziraphale realised what he’d said and his ears went slightly pink.

Crowley smiled softly. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and looked carefully at Aziraphale, ‘Someone you love, huh?’

‘Hm,’ Aziraphale answered, lips pressed together and keeping his eyes on Arthur.

‘How?’ Arthur asked.

‘Well, the best way I can describe it is you need to think of them with love and longing. You need to desperately want them close. It is like you are reaching out to them but with your soul, do you understand? It feels quite all-consuming, the absolute longing of it,’ Aziraphale sighed at the memory, ‘And then suddenly, you are there, with them.’

Arthur floated around in the lavender some more, ‘I think I know what you mean. Love and longing. Sounds like some of my unrequited crushes to be honest.’

‘That isn’t an unfair analogy,’ Aziraphale replied with an uncomfortable wiggle, still keeping his eyes firmly on Arthur, even as Crowley stared directly at him, ‘it is a kind of desperate missing. You are reaching for them, you belong together. In those circumstances a body can’t just get there, but the soul, the soul always can. The soul can always find those it loves.’

‘Well, there are plenty of people here who are missing loved ones back on Earth. I’ll tell them to focus on that longing and see what happens,’ Arthur said.

‘Yes, focus on it and follow it, like, oh I don’t know, a path in the wood or a string connecting you together. Yes, a string makes more sense. Let it pull you in. It feels a bit painful I should warn you. Quite painful. You are travelling through your own longing. It might even stir up some regrets. But it works. And, I think it is the simplest way to get started,’ Aziraphale paused a moment, ‘in fact, it might be the only way.’

‘Thank-you, Aziraphale,’ Arthur said with a grateful nod, ‘Thank-you very much. I’ll let you know how it goes.’

Arthur floated away. The garden was filled with spirits, floating this way and that, communing with each other. All invisible to ordinary humans, of course, but quite perceptible to Aziraphale and Crowley, especially when they focused on seeing them.

‘Well,’ Aziraphale said gazing at the spot in the lavender where Arthur’s spirit once was, ‘It would be magnificent for them to be able to leave the garden. Even if they only manage to visit family and friends. I do hope their experiments prove successful.’

Crowley smiled devilishly, stroking his neck, ‘ _that’s_ what you think we are going to talk about.’

Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to Crowley and back to the garden. The pink spread from his ears to his face and dusted his cheeks, ‘No, I suppose not.’

‘Reaching out but with your soul? Like an unrequited crush? A desperate longing?’ Crowley said in a whisper, leaning forward, ‘you left out those little details when you explained it all to me…’

Aziraphale wiggled in the seat, his eyes darting to Crowley again, ‘Well, if you recall, some of the details of our relationship were still a little ambiguous at the time.’

‘Hm,’ Crowley reached out to Aziraphale, fondling a little white curl of hair, ‘would have clarified the ambiguity quite quickly if you’d have mentioned all that.’

‘I dare say it would have,’ Aziraphale said primly, brushing down his trousers.

‘Might have had you over that bench waiting for the bus,’ Crowley whispered.

Aziraphale puffed out a surprised laugh. It rang through the garden. He was still smiling widely as he said, ‘Perhaps it was for the best then. That would have been a little indiscreet.’

‘Oh I dunno,’ Crowley said a predatory gleam in his eye, ‘Might have you over this bench now.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ Aziraphale protested half-heartedly.

Crowley stroked his own throat, as if considering the proposition. He leaned in and planted a little trail of kisses up Aziraphale’s neck towards his ear. ‘I might,’ he whispered.

Aziraphale shivered slightly, his hands fisted.

‘I could just flip you over, push you down on the bench and have my wanton way with you…’

‘You wily old serpent,’ Aziraphale puffed out another laugh, the blush across his cheeks spreading and deepening.

‘You love it…’

‘That,’ Aziraphale said with a sigh, ‘is quite beside the point.’

Crowley chuckled.

‘Let’ssss get insssside then, angel. You and your delicate ssssensssibilities may want ssssome privacy for what I do next.’

Aziraphale hurried inside, with Crowley at his heels in fast pursuit. As soon as Aziraphale closed the door, Crowley had him pinned to the wall and was trailing kisses up his neck in earnest, his hands deftly undoing Aziraphale’s buttons. Aziraphale did love it. He loved it very much. He loved it all afternoon.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty eight days until The Big One**

**A house in Milwaukee, USA**

Liam sat silently and alone, his faithful dog curled up at his feet. Nights were the worst. He’d discovered that early on. He couldn’t sleep and there was no one and nothing to distract him from the ache. The night was almost over. Almost.

His family and friends had been incredibly supportive. More than he could have hoped for. William, his son, was particularly attentive even though he was grieving too. That, Liam knew, was mostly down to Emma. She’d been such a good mum. A good mum and a good wife. She’d made sure they’d raised him right. And more than that, she’d been an exceptional human being. She had been, for all these years, Liam’s best friend. And now, she was gone forever. Liam’s eyes prickled with tears.

And then, he heard it. He heard her.

‘Liam…’ she seemed to whisper, ‘Liam…’ and the air was infused with the soft smell of her perfume.

‘Emma!’ Liam cried, scrambling to his feet and knocking the dog over, ‘Emma!’

But the voice hushed and the perfume faded.

‘Don’t leave me, Emma!’ Liam cried out to the empty house.

But there was no reply. There could be no reply. Emma was gone. She had gone days ago. She was dead and out of Liam’s reach forever. Liam curled into ball and sobbed.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty eight days until The Big One**

**A flat in Kyoto, Japan**

Rio slipped off of her futon bed, taking care not to wake her sleeping baby. She tip-toed into her living room, and went straight to the framed photo of her grandmother. As she picked it up off the shelf the tears were already streaming down her face, ‘Baba, Oh Obasan…’

She kissed the photo and hugged it close. At least her grandmother had gotten to meet the latest arrival in the family. That was something to hold on to. But Rio was at a loss to know how their family would survive without its matriarch.

‘Rio…’

‘Baba?’ Rio whispered, turning and looking around the room. She could have sworn she had just heard her grandmother's voice. Her grandmother had never believed in an afterlife, Rio knew. But Rio herself was open minded. She returned the photo to the shelf.

‘If you can hear me somehow, I love you Baba. I love you. I will make you proud.’

For a moment she could almost feel her grandmother’s arms wrap, warm and protective, around her. I’m already proud, she seemed to say, I’m already proud.

Rio crept back into bed. She curled protectively around her baby and fell into a peaceful sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Aziraphale helped the souls in the Garden of the Faithless Good to find a way to visit their loved ones. 
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Fiona, one of the residents at The Orchard, has given Evie a Bible and Evie decided that reading the human version of events is probably a good idea.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty five days until The Big One**

**A house in Auckland, New Zealand**

Kai drank his morning cup of coffee slowly. He was drinking it sitting on his little porch, looking out into the garden, as was his morning habit. He closed his eyes and tried to soak up a little of the sunshine. The morning was cool and crisp, but the sunshine felt good.

Kai sighed to himself. He had lost a colleague. A key collaborator in his research. But that was the least of it. He’d lost so much more. In the past six years since Jimmy had moved to the University of Auckland, leaving his family in Sydney behind, he’d become a friend. A dear friend. Probably Kai’s best friend. Did he ever actually tell him that? Shit.

‘Kai!’

Kai spluttered out his mouthful of coffee onto the wooden boards of the porch, dropping the cup a moment later where it shattered with a loud crack. The remaining coffee spilled everywhere.

‘Shit!’ Kai cursed, brushing the droplets of coffee off his pants.

‘Kai! It’s me! It’s Jimmy.’

Kai’s eyes darted all around him. He could see nothing unusual. But he could swear he had heard a voice and not just any voice. Jimmy’s voice.

‘Kai, I don’t have long,’ Jimmy’s voice said again as clear as anything, as clear as if he was standing right next to Kai, ‘There’s an afterlife. I still exist. I’m in a garden in Devil’s Dyke.’

‘Devil’s? What’s this Jimmy?’ Kai’s voice quivered with shock but his sharp mind quickly turned, processing the information, ‘Devil’s? You’re in hell?’

‘No, no,’ Jimmy laughed, ‘it is in South Downs, you know, England?’

‘There’s an afterlife and it’s in England?’ Kai repeated incredulously.

‘Yes. No. Kinda. It’s complicated,’ Jimmy explained, ‘Some of us are coming here. Just some. Anyway, Kai, we need to get word out there about the afterlife.’

‘Right. Yeah. Sure. Fuck,’ Kai laughed, still unsure what to think. Was his mind unraveling in his grief?

‘Oh, and about the fossils,’ Jimmy continued, ‘you see, it is all a joke, all the fossils, all that evidence for evolution is just an elaborate joke. It was all planted by God. The creationists are right. The Earth is a little over 6000 years old. The whole Eden, Adam and Eve, apple creation story is basically is true.’

Kai collapsed into fits of laughter. Jimmy waited patiently. As the fit of laughter settled, Kai gasped, ‘yeah, nice one. Well, now I know it is you.’

‘No, no I’m serious,’ Jimmy said carefully, ‘you think I like finding out a key theory in my life’s work is based on planted evidence and is part of some crazy divine joke?’

‘But,’ Kai scoffed, ‘it isn’t just the fossils, as overwhelming as the fossil evidence is, we’ve observed species evolving in real time. What about that experiment we did with the fruit flies? We’ve seen it ourselves. We’ve collected the data!’

‘I know, mate, I know. But it is a really elaborate joke. Look, I’ve talked to the Serpent himself,’ Jimmy insisted, ‘Genesis is true. The Earth is 6000 years old. I know it sounds crazy but I’m serious.’

‘What the fuck?’ Kai swore.

‘I know, I know,’ Jimmy said, ‘You need proof. I’ll try to come up with something, mate, I promise. But you’ll need to alert the world when I do. Make the scientific community aware of it all.’

Kai pulled a horrified face.

‘Yes, yes. You’ll need evidence for that. I don’t expect you to tell everyone about this. You’d be a laughing stock. I’ll see what I can do,’ Jimmy sighed, ‘In the meantime set up recording equipment or something, see if you can record my voice if I manage to return, alright? Or detect me somehow? Talk to Lottie. She might have an idea. She’ll probably think you are going mad with grief but she’ll still help out. She’s a bit wild like that. That’d be something, right? If you detected a ghost for the first time?’

Kai snorted, ‘Not exactly the kind of discovery I was expecting to make.’

‘Yeah, well. Alexander Fleming didn’t expect to discover antibiotics, did he? Hey, you’ll probably win a Nobel Prize. You’d better share it with me posthumously!’

Kai shook his head, ‘Yeah, yeah. Alright. Don’t even have the data and you’re already talking about the Nobel Prize! Death hasn’t changed you at all huh?’

‘Nope. And, listen, I’ll talk to the other scientists here— there’s a few of us we’ve set up a little society, anyway that’s besides the point— now that one of us has actually managed to communicate properly we will focus on thinking through what we can supply as evidence. We’ll think of something. Oh, I think I’m getting pulled back…’

‘Jimmy! Before you go, I want you to know that, that… you’re my best friend,’ Kai choked out, tears welling in his eyes.

‘Right back at you, Kai…’ Jimmy’s voice faded and was gone.

‘Jimmy?’ Kai called out, ‘Jimmy?!’

But there was no reply. He was gone. Back to the afterlife, which was, apparently, somewhere in England. What would Kai’s Maori ancestors make of that? Had the British Empire really gotten its fingers into the afterlife too? Kai took a few deep breaths, choking back tears and desperate hysterical laughter. Then, a sudden strange sense of calm came over him.

Kai disposed of the remains of his shattered coffee cup, mopping up the spill. He fetched his UD’s glasses and turned augmented reality on, opening his work email. He wrote a quick email to his head of department explaining that he was still struggling in the wake of Jimmy’s death and would not make it into work for the rest of the week. They’d understand. He flicked off several more emails, cancelling meetings with graduate students and re-arranging lectures. Then he made a morning appointment with his doctor. First thing’s first. Check out the simplest explanation. People sometimes hallucinate in grief. Kai had heard of that before. Hell of a hallucination though. He hadn’t heard of anyone having an actual hallucinated conversation before. It seemed unbelievable, ridiculous. But Kai had to accept the possibility that he really had spoken to Jimmy.

Kai hesitated a moment. But just a moment. He flicked a text message off to Lottie asking if she could meet up later in the day. Jimmy was right. She may not believe Kai had actually spoken to Jimmy’s ghost, but she’d be respectful and open minded and she’d do her best to help Kai get that proof.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty five days until The Big One**

**Garden of the faithless, South Downs**

‘What we need is evidence. Something everyone out there will accept. Something the scientific community will take seriously,’ Jimmy said, floating over the lavender, ‘I’ve established good communication with my friend, Kai, and others have too with their friends and family. But if we want to get news of the afterlife out there then we need to give them evidence.’

Aziraphale and Crowley listened to the spirit’s discussion with interest, both of them sitting on the bench in the garden, Aziraphale sitting up primly, Crowley slouching, arm reaching back behind Aziraphale. They let the spirits hash it out, only weighing in if asked. In fact, they were only present at this particular discussion because they were invited. The spirits, as promised, governed themselves.

‘What would the scientific community take seriously as evidence?’ Arthur asked Jimmy as he drifted in the breeze.

Jimmy sighed, ‘In these circumstances? I dunno, mate, I dunno. Sustained documented communication with us, communication that is recorded would be a start. I’ve got Kai onto that already,’ he sighed again, ‘It is convincing everyone that the whole creation thing is literally true that’s the most difficult bit. I mean it sounds absolutely nuts,’ he looked to Aziraphale and Crowley for a moment, ‘no offense.’

‘None taken, dear fellow,’ Aziraphale replied. Crowley just snorted in amusement.

Jimmy made a sound like clearing his throat, even though he of course didn’t have a throat anymore, ‘Anyway, it amounts to asking scientists to believe that mountains of scientific evidence is nothing more than an elaborate joke. That’s a big ask. I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t here.’

The other spirits nodded and hummed in agreement. Arthur gave this some thought.

‘The trouble is,’ another spirit spoke up, ‘God made everything about the universe look exactly as if the Big Bang and evolution were true. Right down to every last detail. There really are mountains of forged evidence. Literally in some cases! I mean that’s right, isn’t it?’

The spirits all looked to Aziraphale and Crowley for confirmation. Aziraphale wiggled nervously. Crowley’s eyes went a little wider behind his sunglasses.

‘I can’t be certain. I wasn’t actually involved in the…well, that’s always been my understanding,’ Aziraphale replied carefully, his hands twisting in his lap nervously.

‘If the entire universe is exactly as if all of that is true, in what sense it is _not_ true?’ one of the spirits, who’d been a philosopher in life, mused.

‘In the sense that it didn’t happen,’ Crowley replied with a big shrug, rolling his eyes. He gave Aziraphale a bemused look and Aziraphale returned a little grin.

‘Still, there’s absolutely no way for us to prove it empirically though, is there?’ the philosopher continued, ‘that’s the point. There’s no way for us to distinguish between a universe in which the Big Bang and evolution happened and a universe which was created 6000 years ago by an omniscient and omnipotent being who chose to make it look as if the Big Bang and evolution happened in every detail. It is Descartes’ old malicious demon argument brought to life.’

Crowley snorted, ‘except the demon is God.’

‘Indeed,’ the philosopher spirit answered.

Crowley burst into laughter at this and the spirit continued their explanation over his chuckles, ‘If an omniscient and omnipotent being is deceiving us, how can we possibly know what’s true and what’s deception? Perhaps it is you two who’ve been deceived, perhaps God planted the false memories of creation in angels and demons and evolution truly happened as the empirical evidence suggests. Or perhaps all of our experiences are an illusion, some kind of a simulation. Who’s to say? It is surely outside the realms of science. At least the current scientific theories give us _predictive_ abilities. And after all, isn’t that what science is really about? Enabling us to predict?’

A hushed silence descended on the garden as the scientists considered this.

‘Actually, that’s a very good point,’ another spirit jumped in, ‘We still use Newtonian physics after all. We use it because it is useful. The theory of evolution is similiarly useful even if it is not literally true because God has made the world act as if it were true.’

Mumbles of ghostly agreement spread throughout the garden.

‘Plus, it turns out the Almighty is a malicious demon. That’s interesting, isn’t it, Azairaphale?’ Crowley said to Aziraphale with a little mocking grin.

‘That isn’t quite what was said, dear,’ Aziraphale answered stiffly, ‘I’m well acquainted with the nature of both the Almighty and prank-loving demons.

Crowley guffawed.

Arthur cleared his throat, ‘Perhaps we should shelve the whole creation issue for now and focus on revealling the fact of an afterlife?’

‘Right.’ Jimmy jumped in, ‘Baby steps. Yeah, I agree with that. So, how? I mean there’s the recording thing. I’ve already got Kai onto that. Any other ideas?’

The spirits floated about for awhile considering it. Several potential methods of detection were suggested, from the possibility that a ghostly presence might change the background radiation to the option of measuring the brain waves of the person they are communicating with, if it turned out that their ghostly voice had no physical, recordable form.

As that conversation wound up, Jimmy turned to Aziraphale and Crowley, ‘What would you do? How would you convince them?’

‘Well, um…’ Aziraphale replied with a little wiggle, ‘I suppose I’ve always found that a bit of heavenly authority, you know, a putting on a bit of a show, a certain glory to one’s presentation, a well-placed miracle or two tends to foster belief.’

Crowley snorted, ‘wrong crowd, angel. That’s not what they mean at all.’

‘Well, what would you do?’ Aziraphale snapped, a little frown creasing his forehead.

‘I would focus on trying to have a physical effect on the physical world. Ghosts can do that sometimes, right? Bumps in the night. Move things around. That kind of thing,’ Crowley replied looking at his fingernails.

‘That’s not a bad idea. All of that is documentable,’ Jimmy said, drifting thoughtfully, ‘are you sure that’s something we can do?’

‘Yeah, sure, ghosts have done that stuff before, right?’ Crowley turned to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale nodded.

Excited murmuring spread through the garden.

‘That’ll take practice but it might work,’ Arthur said.

‘Plus, it is hilarious,’ Crowley said with an excited grin, ‘think about it: you could put their shoes in the fridge. Pin their UD to the ceiling. Make cups fly about the room. Make them think their pets are talking back. That’s gold material right there.’

Aziraphale shook his head at Crowley, his hand over his mouth covering up a smile. He attempted to swallow down a chuckle but a little escaped.

The spirits had a diverse reaction to this. Some were stunned into silence, some tutted in disapproval, and some burst into fits of giggles.

Jimmy laughed long and hard. Eventually, he managed to choke out, ‘you’ve got to admit that would be pretty funny. Kai would appreciate it.’

‘Jimmy gets it,’ Crowley said pointing to Jimmy’s spirit and grinning.

‘Well, putting the comedic value aside, it is still a good idea,’ Arthur said with a little smile, ‘it is definitely something we can build on. Let’s start trying it in our next series of visitations. Documentable physical effects on the world.’

The meeting wound up soon after.

Later that night, while Aziraphale and Crowley were cuddled up together on the couch—Aziraphale reading a book and Crowley scrolling through social media on his UD— Aziraphale suddenly thought of Crowley’s suggestions again and a full vibrant chuckle bubbled up.

Crowley looked up from his UD screen, his eyebrows creased, ‘didn’t think 1984 was a comedy, angel.’

‘It isn’t,’ Aziraphale gasped between laughs, ‘Just— make cups fly about the room?’

‘Ha!’ Crowley barked.

‘Why cups?’ Aziraphale asked still chuckling, ‘that’s what I don’t understand.’

‘Why not cups?’ Crowley said with a shrug and a wide sweeping gesture as he dropped his foldable screen onto the coffee table.

‘Make them think their pets are talking to them?’ Aziraphale gasped.

Crowley laughed, ‘that’s a good one. If you do it right you can string that one out for months. Don’t forget pinning their UD to the ceiling. In my experience you can have all sorts of fun pinning all sorts of things to the ceiling.’

Aziraphale shook his head getting his laughter under a bit of control and tutted with faux annoyance, ‘Don’t I know it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve misplaced a very particular book and then found it on my ceiling.’

Crowley snorted,’never grows old. Hey, remember when I flipped the entire first floor of your bookshop upside down? Put the whole thing on the ceiling?’

Aziraphale glared with some genuine annoyance this time, ‘Do I ever. That was going entirely too far.’

‘Your face, angel. I didn’t realise you could do the whole divine wrath thing, like _really_ do it, until that point. It was…Biblical, like, real Old Testament stuff. I thought you were going to smite me or at least cause I dunno a plague of locusts or something. I was honestly terrified.’

They stared at each other for a moment before collapsing into a fit of giggles.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty five days until The Big One**

**The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, London**

‘Evie!’ Fiona called out from her unit, ‘how are you doing, luv?’

Evie ducked in smiling, ‘I’m well thanks, Fiona.’

Evie found Fiona sitting in her living space in a big comfortable chair, feet on a footstool, cup of tea in had.

‘Read any of the, _you know_ …’ Fiona whispered like she was talking about something illicit or at least scandalous rather than a religious text.

Evie nodded her eyes widening, ‘Yes. Oh, yes. Thank-you. That was an excellent suggestion. Just what I needed.’

‘Watcha up to?’ Fiona asked, taking a sip of her tea.

‘I’ve finished it,’ Evie answered, ‘Moved onto the non-canonical gospels. I’ll read the Koran next. I’m thinking start with the religions of the book and move out from there.’

‘Finished it! Koran next! You swot!’ Fiona said with a laugh, ‘and I was proud of making it to the New Testament in a month. Alright then take a seat I want the verdict.’

Evie pulled up a chair and sat facing Fiona who was looking back with rapt attention, waiting to hear Evie’s thoughts.

‘Well, there’s a lot of inaccuracies,’ Evie began, ‘that’s the first thing I noticed.’

Fiona snorted, ‘Of course. You can’t take it literally, luv.’

‘You can’t?’ Evie swallowed hard at this bizarre statement. How else could you possibly take it?

‘Well,’ Fiona sighed, ‘I don’t think so. They are stories. True enough, sure but _as stories_ not as literal truth.’ 

‘As stories?’ Evie repeated, her mind whirling, desperately trying to figure out what that could possibly mean.

‘Take Genesis. You know, the whole creation thing,’ Fiona explained with a wave of her hand, ‘if you take it literally it is clearly ridiculous. A garden and a serpent tempting Eve into eating some forbidden fruit that represents knowledge of good and evil? Nonsense. But as a story!’ Fiona waggled her finger knowingly, ‘ah! Then it makes sense. Suddenly it really says something, doesn’t it? Something profoundly true.’

Fiona took a long sip of tea.

‘It does?’ Evie’s face twisted in confusion, and she was overcome with a horrible sinking feeling. That was one of the bits she’s found fairly accurate, at least in core details. There had definitely been a garden, Adam and Eve, an apple and a serpent. In fact, the traitor, the demon one had played the part of the serpent. But here was Fiona saying that it only made sense as a story? What did that even mean?

‘Course it does,’ Fiona replied confidently.

‘What?’ Evie spluttered, utterly captivated by Fiona’s bizarre train of thought.

‘Well, think about it,’ Fiona replied, ‘Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and the human race acquired the knowledge of good and evil. It is the story of humanity’s evolution, of us becoming not just animals but _people_. Learning to talk, morality all that stuff. It makes us human. But it also meant we were cast out of the garden of blissful ignorance, didn’t it? Humans suffer in ways that no animals can. We can know we are suffering. Why we can torture ourselves with our own thoughts. As literal truth it makes no sense but as a story it makes all the sense in the world.’

Evie’s mouth opened and closed several times. She made a small wordless noise. But evolution wasn’t true. All the dinosaur fossils were a joke, an elaborate joke, planted by God. Every angel and demon knew that. How could it be that the literal truth of humanity’s creation, when interpreted as a story that is true in meaning but not in fact, mirror the false account of the emergence of the human race? Not just any false account, but the false account that humanity had formed based on the fossils the Almighty herself had planted as a joke. Or wait… was that the punchline? The angels and demons had never been clear about what exactly the punchline in the dinosaur fossil joke was.

‘You alright?’ Fiona said with a concerned frown.

Evie cleared her throat, ‘I just, I’ve never heard anyone talk about Genesis like that.’

Fiona shrugged, ‘Oh, that’s nothing really. I understand, you were raised by fundamentalists like me. But you’ll learn that lots of believers see Biblical stories like the creation story as symbolic truth nowadays. I mean evolution is proven, isn’t it? Can’t argue with science,’ Fiona laughed, ‘well, I suppose you can. My parents did and I’m sure yours do too. But, truly, a lot of people, a lot of believers even, see the creation story as more, well, a metaphorical rather than a literal account.’

‘They do?’ Evie swallowed hard. Did the Archangels know about this? Did the Dark Council?

‘Hm,’ Fiona replied, ‘I’ve thought that way for years. But lately, I’m thinking it all through again, and you know what I’m trying to puzzle out at the moment? I’m trying to puzzle out this: why stop there.’

‘Stop where?’ Evie gulped, hardly knowing if she was ready for what she was about to hear next.

‘With the creation story,’ Fiona patiently explained, ‘If I’m going to read that as a story not as a literal truth then why shouldn’t I read the whole damn thing that way? Noah’s Ark, King David, the Gospels, and the Book of Revelations, what if they are all stories, what if we took them all as symbolic truth only?’

Evie’s mind spun. She unconsciously gripped the arms of the chair. ‘But, but, Jesus existed. He really existed,’ she spluttered.

Fiona shrugged, absolutely nonplussed, ‘maybe. Doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t mean more as a story though, does it? Good at telling stories to illustrate core concepts, Jesus, maybe he made his life into a story for us all.’

Evie shook her head in shock.

‘And why stop there?’ Fiona continued on regardless, ‘Maybe all of the world’s religions are stories trying to get at some kind of truth, not literal truth mind but _meaning_. Perhaps, all we are left with is something like: God is love,’ Fiona paused and sipped her tea considering this, ‘but no, why stop there? Maybe God isn’t a literal truth either. Maybe God is symbolic. So maybe all we are left with is something like this: love is,’ Fiona took another sip considering this. She must have found it satisfactory because she nodded to herself and put down her cup, ‘Well, what do you think?’

Evie swallowed hard, trying to swallow down the rising feeling of nausea as the world seemed to spin around her. Fiona was patient. She simply waited kindly for Evie to reply. Evie licked her dry lips and swallowed again. Eventually she managed to say, ‘I have never thought of it quite like that. But I’ve always been told it is ineffable.’

‘Yes. Ineffable. I like that. Love is and it is ineffable. Well, if it is ineffable, perhaps that’s why we need stories to hint at it, huh? Hm,’ Fiona said with a sigh, ‘oh, but I have completely taken over. You finish telling me your thoughts, Evie.’

‘Oh. Oh,’ Evie swallowed, trying to re-capture her own insights. She licked her lips and clasped her hands together, ‘well, well I did wonder about the contradictory rules, and the the rules that didn’t make a lot of sense or were cruel like the bits about killing men who slept with other men, or women obeying their husbands. Seemed like some of the rules came from humans, not God. So which rules come from God? How do we know what God wants from us?’

Fiona nodded, ‘Men loving other men or women disobeying their husbands doesn’t seem like what a God of love would be worried about, does it?’

‘Um. No, no it doesn’t,’ Evie agreed.

‘Did I ever show you a picture of my wife?’ Fiona said with a smile already getting up and fetching the framed photo from her bedside table, ‘there we are. In our younger days, of course.’

Evie stared at the image of two women in their thirties, leaning in for a photo over a table of food at a Chinese restaurant. Fiona was clearly recognisable, though she was, of course, much younger, and had longer hair. She already had her tattoos though. She was looking across at the other woman and laughing. Her wife, an attractive woman with a spikey pixie cut, was poking her tongue out at the camera. The photo captured the love between the two women perfectly. Evie looked at the picture and she recognised with a pang of longing something she would like to find for herself one day. She recognised something beautiful, something precious, something good. She smiled, ‘you look happy.’

‘We were. We were. Miss her everyday,’ Fiona sighed, ‘point is, we had to wait to marry, you see. Those stupid rules. We had to wait for same sex marriage to be made legal and even then we couldn’t get married in a church. Sarah wanted to. It was really important to her. But they refused. So we went to the registry office instead. Sarah never forgave the church. Never set foot in a church again. But she always believed God was on our side. Never thought the bullshit rules came from him. Never stopped praying.’

‘Right,’ Evie said with a nod, trying to process this, ‘right.’

‘Terrible things have been done in God’s name,’ Fiona muttered as she returned the photograph to its place by her bed, ‘Horrific violence, persecution, prejudice, just so much suffering. Humans have done absolutely terrible things in the name of God.’

Evie’s mind swam with Biblical stories: the Flood, the plagues of Egypt, Sodom and Gomorrah and the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. She remembered her previous conversation with Lil. Maybe the angels and the demons have made up some bullshit rules along the way too. Mouth dry she whispered, ‘angels too.’

Fiona’s head tilted to the side and her eyes widened in surprise, ‘Oh. Oh, my, Evie. You think perhaps they don’t entirely know what’s going on either? Huh,’ she leaned back in her chair, ‘I never thought of it from an angel’s perspective before. But I suppose they could be just as confused as the rest of us,’ she sighed, ‘So much horror, absolute horror, Evie, done in the name of God. It doesn’t seem right if God is love, does it? How did it all go so wrong?’

Evie felt like a ghost moving through the rest of her shift. She was barely there at all. Her conversation with Fiona, along with her previous conversation with Lil, rattled around in her head. If humans had made up a lot of stupid rules, rules that didn’t come truly come from the Almighty at all, what’s to say the angels and demons hadn’t made up their own stupid rules? No one had heard from the Almighty directly for a long time. If the humans had gotten things all muddled, perhaps the angels and demons had too?

Evie could see only one solution. She needed to communicate with the Almighty directly. She needed to hear from the Almighty herself what she wanted.

Evie was relieved to be able to clock off and return to their flat. She was also relieved to find the flat empty when she first came home. As much as she enjoyed her sister’s company, she was in no mood for it. Evie marched straight to her room, closed the door, and knelt. Her brought her hands to a prayer position in front of her face and began to pray as she had never done before. She prayed with desperation and devotion, until her voice was hoarse and tears poured down her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone spots the Mighty Boosh reference let me know. ;-)


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device received a copy of Agnes Nutter's second book of prophesy. She's told her father. They just need to figure out how to tell her mother. 
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Evie has realised that the angels might not have much more true understanding of God's will than humans. She's decided that they need answers from God herself. 
> 
> Aziraphale and Crowley have a growing community of faithless but good souls spending their afterlife in their garden.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty three days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

‘Dad,’ Morgan whispered over the breakfast table, ‘we have to tell mum. You can’t keep stalling.’

‘I haven’t been stalling,’ Newton whispered back furiously buttering his toast.

Morgan gave him _the_ _look_ as she ate her final spoonful of porridge. It was exactly the same look her mother used, down to the very last detail. Newton wondered how much of it was genetics and how much was learned. Either way, Newton felt it bore relentlessly into his soul. He sighed, putting the butter knife down on the table with a clink.

‘I haven’t been stalling. I’ve been preparing,’ Newton replied, ‘We’ll tell her tonight. The Smiths check out today so the cottage will be empty. No one to complain about the yelling. I’ll make her favourite dinner and I have just the thing for after we tell her.’

Morgan clicked her tongue, ‘Well, it had better be tonight.’

‘What’s tonight?’ Anathema asked as she strode into the kitchen.

‘A family meal, my darling. We’ll dine al fresco. Make it special. I’m making your favourite,’ Newt replied with a nervous smile.

Anathema’s eyes narrowed and her gaze flicked back and forth from Newt to Morgan, ‘If you think I don’t know that you two are up to something you’re wrong. It better be good whatever it is.’

Newt laughed hysterically and tried to stop himself by jamming toast into his mouth which he immediately chocked on. Morgan simply smiled with confidence and faux innocence.

‘Well, I’m off,’ Anathema said, helping herself to a slice of toast from Newt’s plate. She started eating it as she strode out the door.

‘Bye, dear!’

‘See ya mum!’

‘Goodbye you two. Keep your father out of trouble,’ Anathema called out.

Newt sighed deeply, slipping down his seat in relief, ‘that was close.’

Morgan helped her father to clean up the cottage after the Smiths checked out and with one or two other jobs on the lavender farm. As the day came to an end, and the sun began to set they got busy in the kitchen cooking a vegetarian lasagna for dinner and a chocolate pudding for dessert.

Newt set up the outside table, throwing a white tablecloth over it and adding a few candles. With the fields of lavender in the background, the atmosphere was serene.

Anathema was impressed by the meal. Newt and Morgan let her enjoy it all, engaging in their usual friendly family banter only.

Eventually, Anathema finished her last spoonful of chocolate pudding. 

She sighed, ‘Well, c’mon you two. This is lovely. We should do it more often. But what exactly is the occasion? Out with it.’

‘I have news,’ Morgan confidently announced.

Newt bit his lower lip nervously.

‘Oh! You’ve decided what you are going to do next!’ Anathema gushed, ‘that’s wonderful! Whatever it is you have our complete support. We just want you to be happy and follow your heart.’

‘Um, well, I guess that’s sort of it,’ Morgan said, her confidence suddenly drying up, ‘in a way.’ She looked across to her father.

Newton sighed. He leaned across the table to make direct eye contact with Anathema.

‘You see, love, well, the thing is…the thing is…there were two copies,’ Newt managed to get out, stumbling a little over the words, ‘Two copies of Agnes Nutter’s second book of prophesies. A copy was given to Morgan on her last day in Paris. She wants to, well, try to figure them out.’

Anathema’s face paled. For a moment she stopped breathing. Newton’s heart quietly broke for her. He knew, perhaps better than anyone else, what a blow this would be.

‘Darling,’ Newt whispered.

‘A second copy?’ Anathema said slowly, still reeling from the shock, ‘There’s a second copy. And Morgan has it?’

Newton nodded slowly, lips pressed together, holding his breath and waiting for the explosion.

Anathema’s fists clenched and her jaw tightened.

Newton saw his cue. He stood up and in one fluid motion pulled a box of china out from under the table. He passed a plate to Anathema.

Anathema looked at it blankly.

‘Go on,’ Newt said, ‘give it a throw,’ he gestured towards the little stone wall that separated their outdoor dining area from the lavender fields.

Anathema took the plate—a pretty little china plate with a floral pattern—and hurdled it towards the stone wall where it smashed with a loud crack, the shards falling onto the cement ground like rain.

Newton passed another. And another. Then he simply handed over the box and sat back down to watch at a safe distance.

‘Another fucking book of fucking prophesy!’ Anathema screamed as she hurdled a tea cup with a delicate blue pattern, ‘you bitch, Agnes!’ Another plate, with red and blue birds on it, went flying, ‘you fucking bitch,’ more tea cups smashed, ‘you leave my daughter alone! Fucking bitch.’ The smashing and the screaming continued until the box was empty. Anathema collapsed onto her chair, tears streaming down her face, her catharis complete.

Newton quickly moved towards her, wrapped his arms around her from behind her chair and leaned down to kiss her forehead, ‘it’s alright. It’ll be alright.’

Anathema nodded and sighed. She turned and sunk into into her husband’s embrace, sobbing softly. Newt held her and stroked her hair tenderly, giving her all the time she needed.

Morgan watched the whole spectacle from afar, not entirely sure what to make of it but knowing that it was best for her to leave it to her dad. He seemed to know what he was doing. He had been preparing after all. 

Eventually, Anathema dried her eyes and turned back to face her daughter. She slipped her hand into Newt’s and he stood, strong and supportive by her side. She smiled sadly and said, ‘I’m sorry, Morgan. I always thought you’d be spared. I was so happy that you would be spared.’

‘Mum, its okay. I want this. I’m _choosing_ to do it,’ Morgan replied, her eyes aglow with a fierce determination that Anathema immediately recognised as her own.

Anathema sighed. She knew all too well that if that was how Morgan felt then all they could do was to support her and to protect her as much as they could.

Anathema nodded, resigned, ‘Alright. But you stick to that. Don’t do anything because Agnes Nutter tells you to. You do what you want.’

‘I know, I know,’ Morgan said, ‘Dad’s already told me.’

Anathema sighed again, ‘Well? Where is it? I suppose we should read the thing.’

Morgan grinned.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty three days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

‘Evie!’ Lil called from the living room interrupting Evie’s devoted prayers. Evie has been praying regularly and fervently since her conversation with Fiona. She was determined to receive answers directly from God herself. What, exactly, had the Almighty intended in the creation of the Earth? Which of the rules in the Bible were her own? And what did the Almighty want from Evie and Lil?

‘Evie!’ Lil cried out again, ‘you’ve gotta see this!’

Evie sighed. Her hands slipped down from the prayer position in which they’d been clasped for the past two hours and she stood stiffly, moving slowly at first while pins and needles exploded over her calves. Eventually, she managed to stumble into the living room. 

‘God answering yet?’ Lil asked with a raised eyebrow.

Evie shook her head.

‘Alright. Well, here’s something you might find interesting while we wait for the Almighty to action her messages. I think it is right up your alley,’ Lil said with a grin.

Lil unfolded her foldable screen and set it up on the coffee table, so they could both look at it together. Evie sat next to Lil on the couch and patiently waited. 

The screen lit up, displaying a mass of streaming data, with calculations rapidly happening at the side.

‘What is this?’ Evie asked, leaning forward, curiosity piqued.

Lil grinned. She knew Evie would be excited.

‘Data,’ Lil said, ‘all different kinds of data. Heart rate, and steps taken and purchases made and location on Earth and shows watched and news accessed and social media interactions. All of the data from these,’ Lil pointed to her UD on her wrist, ‘Deidentified and waiting for someone to make sense of it. You can freelance this stuff you know? Download a chunk of data, analyse it and if you find something useful, companies will pay you for it. Isn’t that cool?’

Evie nodded her eyes lighting up, ‘Oh! It is like the…’

‘The Earth Observation Files. Yep, exactly like that. Slightly different data, though, of course.’

‘Oh, that’s brilliant,’ Evie sighed in wonder. Clever humans.

‘Now, I reckon we can use some of the same techniques and formulas that we developed for The Earth Observation Files for this data. Adapt them. Don’t you think?’

‘Oh, but that’s brilliant,’ Evie enthused, her mind whirring with the possibilities. This was it! This was their plan B. Even if God never answered them directly, then using this data, they could make sense of everything. Oh! Evie’s mind skipped ahead: especially if they triangulated it with the Earth Observation Files. This is how they could figure out how to fix the world!

‘It’s, it’s, oh, Lil, you are a genius! It is the answer to our prayers!’ Evie gushed.

Lil laughed, ‘I guess. Maybe. Should be useful though, huh? Good idea.’

‘Very good idea,’ Evie nodded grinning and Lil preened.

‘How did you find out about this?’ Evie asked.

‘Ethan told me,’ Lil replied, smiling wildly, ‘he mucks about with this stuff in his spare time. You know, he’s actually quite brilliant. Could do anything but he likes washing those dogs and having plenty of time for himself.’

Evie smiled knowingly.

Lil cleared her throat, ‘anyway, it is good right?’

‘Oh yes. I’m in. Where do we start?’

‘Let me download the data to both of our UDs. We’ll do our thing and see if we can make some kind of sense of it,’ Lil replied.

Evie clapped her hands in delight, ‘go on then.’

Well, thought Evie, perhaps the Almighty was answering her prayers after all.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty three days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Crowley was woken early. Well, not actually early but certainly earlier than he had intended to wake, by the ethereal sounds of a lively and energetic discussion going on in his garden.

Crowley blinked several times, tried going back to sleep with a pillow over his head, and eventually gave up, struggled out of bed and miracled himself into a fresh outfit in his usual black on black colour scheme. He sauntered over to the living room where he found Aziraphale sitting on their couch, anxiously frowning at the glass doors that led from their living space into their back garden.

‘Trouble in paradise?’ Crowley said with a raised eyebrow.

‘It certainly sounds heated,’ Aziraphale replied putting down his book and fussing with his bowtie, ‘do you think we should do something?’

Crowley shrugged, ‘In Hell they’d probably give them weapons. I don’t suppose that’s what you mean?’

Aziraphale frowned and tutted, ‘Not quite.’

They both kept starting at the glass doors wondering if they should get involved. Just as Azairaphale was coming to a firm decision that they should become involved after all, Arthur’s spirit appeared at the door and waved to them both.

‘Oh, dear,’ Aziraphale said, getting up and nervously straightening up his clothes, ‘I suppose that’s our cue. Let’s see what’s happening then.’

Crowley flicked on his sunglasses, strode over to the glass door and opened it.

‘Do you mind?’ Arthur said, ‘I need a word.’

Crowley snapped his fingers and living room couch whisked over to the door. He figured this could be a lengthy one. Aziraphale sat on it primly and Crowley collapsed onto the other side.

‘What’s happening?’ Aziraphale asked, a little frown of concern.

‘Yeah you lot are having a right barney. What’s it over?’ Crowley added.

‘Oh this isn’t a disagreement as such,’ Arthur said floating in a manner that somehow conveyed anxiety, ‘but yes, everyone is quite agitated.’

‘What about?’ Aziraphale said with a frown, peering beyond Arthur into the garden.

‘Well, about where all the other souls are going,’ Arthur said.

‘Ah,’ Aziraphale said with a little anxious wiggle. Crowley grimaced.

‘I could only stall them for so long, you see,’ Arthur explained, ‘I do hope I did the right thing there. Some of them are quite put out that I didn’t tell them everything immediately. But, you see, I simply wanted us to find our feet as a community before confronting it,’ he paused. Once again, his spirit pulsed with worry. If he had still had a physical form he’d have been worrying at his lip or twisting his hands together, ‘Anyway, it is all out now. Someone asked the right question and, of course, I told the truth. They now all know that, aside from this garden, the other two possible afterlife destinations are Heaven and Hell.’

Crowley frowned, ‘they didn’t figure that out from the whole angel and demon thing or Eden? Isn’t it obvious?’

Arthur shook his head, if a spirit could be said to shake his head, ‘No. I mean, some did use the concept of Heaven to understand this experience. But those who did figured that this was Heaven. And many didn’t understand this experience in those terms at all. We are drawn from all over the world and our defining characteristic is our lack of faith. Most people focused on the empirical evidence in front of them: the garden. Right up until my little revelation, the most favoured theory was that the afterlife was a series of gardens.’

Crowley snorted, ‘my garden is a darn sight better than Heaven. I resent the comparison.’

‘I can see how that made sense,’ Aziraphale replied with a little sigh.

‘That’s not all. I explained that Death was originally going to send me to Hell for lack of faith. Understanding that they were all destined for an eternity of torment has, as you can imagine, proven quite disturbing,’ Arthur said.

‘Indeed,’ Aziraphale said with much hand wringing, ‘that must be quite a shock,’ his eyes darted across to Crowley.

Crowley’s expression was hauntingly blank. He swallowed hard.

‘Right,’ Arthur agreed, ‘they are also most concerned about the well-being of the souls who _are_ in Hell.’

‘They are right to be concerned about that,’ Crowley answered, ‘Not exactly a desirable travel destination, Hell. You all had a very lucky escape.’

‘Yes,’ Arthur said, ‘and we are grateful. But, look, we are all terribly concerned that some of our family and friends may be in Hell. We are also conscious of the fact that all of us would have ended up there. How many souls in a metaphysically similar position to us were already in Hell when your side came into being?’

‘Ah,’ Aziraphale coughed, ‘those are some pretty big conundrums.’

Crowley looked to Aziraphale, ‘the humans in Heaven must have similar questions about friends and family in Hell. How’s that usually managed?’

‘Well,’ Aziraphale said brushing down his trousers, ‘I don’t have any direct experience with that side of Heaven but my understanding is that the importance of the Great Plan and the ineffability of it all is explained and that they all well, accept that.’

Crowley snorted and rolled his eyes, ‘in other words any questioning or disagreement is ruthlessly suppressed. Big surprise there.’

‘Hm,’ Aziraphale muttered with a little nod.

‘Why would anyone accept that their loved ones are being tortured for eternity just because they are told it is part of some Great Plan?’ Arthur said, ‘I mean, most of us are in agreement that it is immoral for Hell to exist at all.’

‘Even for Hitler? And Vlad the Impaler? And Caligula?’ Crowley said with a wider sweeping gesture.

‘Certainly people like that need to be stopped. And if they need to be killed to stop them so be it. But what good would making them suffer for eternity do?’ Arthur countered.

‘m sleeping better for a start,’ Crowley answered with a shudder, ‘You didn’t _meet_ Caligula. Easy to say that when you didn’t meet the bastard.’

Arthur floated around as he considered this, ‘Perhaps. But whether or not a few exceptional people actually deserve Hell is beside the point. I’m sure there are plenty of people in Hell who aren’t anything like Hitler. People who are there for much more ordinary reasons, including people like us who are there simply for lacking faith.’

‘True enough,’ Crowley said with a shrug, ‘Most people end up in Hell.’

‘Most people?’ Arthur repeated, horrified.

Aziraphale nodded, a worried frown creasing his forehead, ‘I’m afraid so. It is quite difficult to get into Heaven and the whole process is just a bit mysterious. For example, of the world’s great musical composers all we have is Elgar and Liszt.’

‘What, not Beethoven?’ Arthur asked, shocked.

‘Ours,’ Crowley said with a grin.

‘Or Mozart?’

‘Also ours.’

‘Schubert?’

‘Ours.’

‘Bach?’

Crowley snorted, ‘which one? Oh, wait it doesn’t matter we have all of them.’

‘Johann Sebastian Bach didn’t get into Heaven for Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring?’ Arthur spluttered, ‘I don’t know much about religion, but I know something about classical music and it is widely regarded as the single most sublime piece of devotional music ever composed. Surely that is worth something?’

‘Don’t have _taste_ in Heaven, Arthur,’ Crowley said with a smirk, ‘shoulda made it go,’ Crowly stood and began a Julie Andrews impression singing with wide dramatic gestures, ‘the hills are alive with the sound of music...’

‘I wonder if Julie Andrews made it into Heaven,’ Aziraphale said, tapping his chin.

Crowley flopped back down on the couch, ‘With Heaven’s obsession? They’d have taken the whole cast and crew, angel, I’ll bet.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Probably.’

‘Well that’s…’ Arthur sputtered, ignoring the Sound of Music diversion, ‘I mean that only…we have to get them out!’

The smirk fell from Crowley’s face, ‘you what?’

‘All the people trapped in Hell. We have to get them out. _Now_ ,’ Arthur repeated with urgency.

‘Oh yeah. Yeah. I’ll just wander on down and say,’ Crowley went into an over the top impression of himself cowering before Beelezebub, ‘excuse me Lord Beelzebub, yes, yes Crowley the traitor here. I’m just here to liberate all the souls of Hell. Yeah, putting them in my garden next to the lavender. Latest craze in garden ornaments, human souls. Oh, thank you for simply releasing all the human souls to me without torturing or destroying me or anything, Lord Beelzebub,’ Crowley stood and bowed dramatically. He fell back onto the couch and scoffed, ‘yeah sure. That’d work real well.’

Aziraphale started wringing his hands, ‘I’m not sure there _is_ a way to get them out, Arthur. It is um… written into the metaphysical laws of the universe you see. That’s where they belong. Even if we somehow got them out, they’d simply return there as you all return here. Remember, some of them do manage to have little excursions to Earth, as you have all discovered.’

‘The metaphysical laws can be changed. You changed them when you created this place!’ Arthur countered.

‘Not _deliberately_ though, Arthur,’ Aziraphale said, worrying at his bottom lip, ‘and not alone. Adam Young unknowingly played a part. You yourself played your part when you argued with Death and Death played their part when they interpreted the metaphysical changes a certain way and set a precedent. We wouldn’t know how to do it again.’

‘I see,’ Arthur said. He floated about in the lavender awhile taking this in. ‘I suppose I should update the others. They’ll still want to do something. Though what any of us can do I really don’t know.’

Aziraphale nodded as Arthur floated away. He flicked his hand and miracled the door shut.

‘Oh dear,’ Aziraphale said turning to Crowley, little tears prickling at the corner of his eyes, ‘this is a nasty business, isn’t it?’ 

Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and silently squeezed. His own mind was racing with the the implications. Would Arthur and the other souls come up with a plan? Would Aziraphale? Whatever plan they came up with it wouldn’t work, of course it wouldn’t work—you can’t just break souls out of Hell— but they might decide to try something anyway. And then what? And then they’d bring the wrath of Hell down on themselves. They’d bring the wrath of Hell here.

Crowley’s mind skipped ahead to all the ways Hell might turn up on their doorstep, running each scenario through and desperately trying to figure out just how he was going to keep Aziraphale safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey readers!
> 
> I'm going to swap to fortnightly updates for a little while, than back to weekly updates again. Basically, in terms of first drafts, I'm much further ahead than this current posted chapter. I'm currently working on chapter twenty-five, in fact. With weekly updates I need to keep that first draft pushing along and give sufficient attention to brushing up and polishing the next chapter to be posted every week. If I slow down to fortnightly updates, that'll give me more time to put into the first draft. I wanting to get that to the end or close to and then switch back to weekly updates. I should have been able to maintain weekly updates throughout but the whole COVID-19 situation has affected things. Apologies. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has commented on this fic. I love hearing from you. 
> 
> Take care.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> The souls living in the Garden of the Faithless Good now know that the majority of human souls, including up until Arthur faithless good souls, end up in Hell. They are not pleased. Crowley is concerned that they or Aziraphale will come up with a stupid plan that'll put Aziraphale in danger. 
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Lil has discovered that they can access the deidentified data from everyone's UDs, because the companies make the data available for people to analyse it, find interesting patterns, and sell them. They have realised that this might be a way to figure out how the world went wrong and hence how to fix it. 
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device received a copy of Agnes Nutter's second book of prophesy and she's told both her father and her mother about it.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty days until The Big One**

**A.Z. Fell and Co Purveyor of Books to the Gentry, Soho, London**

Aziraphale miracled the door unlocked with a quick flick of his hand as stepped across the pavement from the Bentley. He paused, turned to Crowley and gestured, ‘After you.’

Crowley smiled and nodded as he clicked his fingers to lock the Bentley and entered Aziraphale’s Bookshop. He slipped his sunglassed off as he entered, hooking them onto the top of his shirt.

‘Thank-you for driving me in, my dear,’ Aziraphale said as he followed.

‘I always drive you in,’ Crowley drawled.

‘Still. Thank-you. It is good to make it in again,’ Aziraphale said with a little sigh and shake of his head, ‘I’ve quite mucked up my usual opening hours.’

Crowley snorted as he flipped into the couch, ‘Isn’t that the general idea?’

‘Perhaps,’ Aziraphale said with a little smile and a wink as he strode over to his desk and began to shuffle through the pile of letters. Yes, letters. How Aziraphale managed to get people to send him letters was beyond Crowley. Crowley had long since assumed that some kind of miracle was involved where a customer’s emails appeared on Aziraphale’s desk in the form of letters.

Crowley shrugged, ‘m jus’ happy to have a break from Arthur Sinclair and the faithful good troop to be honest.’

Aziraphale frowned. He paused in sorting through his mail and looked pointedly at Crowley.

Crowley held his hands up defensively, ‘Nothing against them, angel. Exactly the kind of people I’ve always liked. Just…’ he shrugged, ‘a bit much sometimes, isn’t it? If I’d have wanted a multitude of human souls living in my garden I’d have arranged it myself.’

‘Yes. Quite,’ Aziraphale agreed with a little sigh, satisfied with Crowley’s answer. ‘It isn’t quite what you had planned for your garden, is it? And it is very much your space,’ he looked around, ‘I don’t exactly appreciate people invading my space here.’

Crowley shrugged, ‘S’alright. ‘m over it.’

Aziraphale’s lips pressed together and his forehead creased with worry as he looked carefully at Crowley, ‘you are more tolerant than I give you credit for sometimes, dear.’

Crowley waved him away, ‘Shuddup. Get on with it. Customers and whatever. That’s what we are here for, yeah? ‘m gonna have a nap.’

Crowley sprawled out on the couch, stretched and closed his eyes.

Aziraphale returned to his mail, going through it carefully, making little piles of the letters—bills to be paid, letters that required a response, letters that needed to be filed—keeping an eye on Crowley the whole time. When Crowley’s breathing settled into the slow, steady breathing of full sleep, Aziraphale got up from his desk and walked quietly over to him.

In Aziraphale’s opinion, Crowley was particularly beautiful asleep, his crimson hair cascading around his perfect face, his movements stilled and peaceful. Aziraphale smiled at the sight. He waved a hand in front of Crowley’s face. No reaction. Definitely asleep then.

Aziraphale moved through the Bookshop quietly, selecting books off the shelves. He moved the little piles of letters to one side and created piles of books on this desk instead: books on the law, citizenship, and religion. He flicked through each carefully and efficiently, finding the information he was after and taking notes in a little notebook. When he had finished he looked through his notes, pulled his glasses off his face and sighed. There was simply no way to know for sure. It wasn’t a matter of human law, or religious doctrine, it was bound up in the metaphysics of the universe. There simply wasn’t a book on that. The Almighty hadn’t exactly written it down. Aziraphale couldn’t know without testing. Yes, a test case. A single, clear test case. That’s what was needed.

Aziraphale heard a customer opening the Bookshop’s door and quickly miracled her away. The potential customer stumbled away from the Bookshop door and returned directly home on the London underground utterly befuddled. Later that night she would wonder to her husband why she came home early without buying the books—a present for her niece— that she’d specifically left her house to buy. Her husband would shake his head and tell her that he could always pick them up sometime for her, but his forehead would crease a little in worry.

Aziraphale made himself a cocoa and sat slowly drinking it, pondering exactly how they could execute his plan of a test case, and more importantly, how he was going to tell Crowley about the plan. His heart thudded in his chest, and his hands found each other, twisting in worry as he mentally rehearsed the conversation, silently mouthing the words.

‘Agh,’ Crowley said with a yawn, golden eyes opening and quickly narrowing, ‘you’re thinking something. ‘d know that look anywhere. Out with it.’

Aziraphale smiled nervously, ‘it’s nothing dear. Just a little idea. Something to consider,’ he sipped his cocoa one last time, finishing it, and put the empty cup on his desk.

‘Gah. That bad, huh? Well, out with it,’ Crowley said, slipping into a sitting position on the couch and stretching.

‘Well,’ Aziraphale licked his lips, ‘obviously we can’t simply rush in and rescue all the souls in Hell,’ Aziraphale said with a nervous laugh.

Crowley went still, unnaturally still. The gold in his eyes quickly bled all the way to the edge and he stared unblinking, ‘Obviously. It’d be a hopeless suicide mission.’

‘Right. Exactly. However, it’s just possible that the, well, the certain changes in the metaphysical laws that we accidentally created with Adam’s help, that they…well, that they are back-dated,’ Aziraphale looked across at Crowley with wide hopeful eyes.

‘No,’ Crowley said definitely.

‘I could just pop into accounts—in disguise, obviously, pretending to be from Heaven— with a test case…’ Aziraphale continued quickly.

‘No,’ Crowley repeated.

‘We’ll pick a friend or a relative of one of our souls, a really clear-cut case of a person who would have come to us if they hadn’t, you know, died before the changes…’ Aziraphale stumbled on.

‘No.’

‘I’ll ask them to check the status of so-and-so possible error blah blah blah… if they come up as not belonging in Hell, well, we will know it backdates…’

‘No.’

‘If it does then I’ll be entitled to ask for an an audit of the system. They’ll do the audit and all the souls incorrectly classified will come to us…’

‘No.’

‘They won’t see the actual classification, just that they aren’t one of theirs so they’ll return them to me still thinking I’m there on behalf of Heaven. Simple.’

‘No. No. No. Absolutely not. No. You are not risking your life like that. No.’

Aziraphale sighed deeply. He looked directly at Crowley, eyes wide, ‘I think I must, dear boy.’

Crowley leapt off the couch, stalking back and forth in front of it, buzzing with restless energy. Why did Aziraphale have to make it so damn hard to keep him safe? Why did Crowley have to love him so damn much? When he answered his voice quivered with anger, ‘you think you must?! You think you must?! You stupid angel! You bloody stupid, idiotic fool of an angel…’

Aziraphale smiled sympathetically. He knew that under that anger there was a deep well of anxiety, ‘I’m sorry, dear. I really am.’

Crowley stopped in his pacing and turned to look directly at Aziraphale, ‘Oh, you’re sorry? Well, that makes your upcoming suicide totally fine, doesn’t it? I didn’t realise you were _sorry_ about your impending death.’

‘Crowley…’ Aziraphale sighed.

‘You’re not going,’ Crowley announced, ‘I’ll… I’ll tie you to that chair.’

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. Crowley growled in frustration.

‘I’ll…I’ll…’ Crowley suddenly remembered a threat that Aziraphale himself had made thirty years ago, ‘I’ll never speak to you again!’

Aziraphale laughed. Crowley glared.

‘Sorry. That’s just, well,’ Aziraphale gave a little shrug, ‘I didn’t even mean it that way when I said it and Satan was coming. You certainly don’t mean it now, do you?’

Crowley stalked slowly closer pulling Aziraphale up off his chair roughly and pushing him against the bookshelves so hard that Aziraphale was forced onto tip toes. He pushed himself up against Aziraphale’s body, meeting his gaze with an angry glare. Aziraphale remembered a time, not so long ago really, when interactions like this one were rare opportunities for physical proximity, when Aziraphable cherished them in a strange way.

Crowley hissed menacingly, ‘I am not losssing you again. Not ever. Do you understand me, angel?’

Aziraphale knew Crowley would never hurt him. That was the whole point. He cleared his throat and answered, ‘Y-yes. I am going to do it though, Crowley. It is the right thing to do.’

‘You promissssed,’ Crowley hissed.

‘I didn’t promise to remain under glass,’ Aziraphale said stiffly.

‘And I didn’t asssk that of you! You know that isn’t what thisss isss. Cut the bullshit, angel!’

‘Alright,’ Aziraphale said, resigned, ‘alright, dear. It is risky. Very risky. But it is important to me. They are suffering, Crowley, and I think I can save them. I know it matters to you too. I need to save them.’

Crowley sighed, his eyes finally fluttering closed. When he opened them he had softened. ‘I know,’ he said gently, ‘I know you do. I knew you’d come up with some ridiculous plan,’ he smiled, his affection leaking through. Aziraphale smiled back, responding to Crowley’s softness.

‘And,’ Crowley continued, ‘that’s why I’m going in your place. You can lend me your body.’

‘What?’ Aziraphale cried out, instantly outraged. That was quite a different matter, altogether different, ‘no! Absolutely not! You made promsies too! As if I want to be left here all… all…’

‘Alone?’ Crowley whispered as he tenderly caressed Aziraphale’s face, his fingers running down his cheek and across his chin, ‘and like being left without you isn’t my worst nightmare?’

Aziraphale frowned, tears welling in his eyes, ‘you aren’t going in my place, Crowley.’

‘Then I’m coming with you,’ Crowley said with grim certainty, ‘No one gets left alone. It’s the only way.’

‘Fine.’ Aziraphale pouted.

Crowley kissed Aziraphale’s pouting lips softly. Aziraphale leaned in hungrily, his tongue finding warm welcome. Crowley groaned into Aziraphale’s mouth. But he also quickly pulled back. He smiled sadly, ‘I need a drive. I’ll be back in an hour to take you to a romantic sushi dinner. We’ll get drunk on sake, talk about everything except this ridiculous plan, and then I’ll bring you back here and fuck you over the couch until you beg for mercy.’

‘Alright, then, dear,’ Aziraphale answered, tongue running along his lips, ‘Sounds lovely.’

‘To be clear: if, when I return, you aren’t safely tucked away in this Bookshop there’ll be Hell to pay. Literally. ‘m still holding you to your promises.’

‘Yes. Yes,’ Aziraphale nodded, ‘Alright, dear.’

Crowley shook his head and stalked over to the door muttering to himself.

‘Mind how you go!’ Aziraphale called out.

Crowley waved without looking back as he slammed the door.

Aziraphale let out a deep sigh. He made himself another cup of cocoa to steady his nerves. All in all, he thought that went rather well.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

‘You know I think this is better than the Earth Observation Files,’ Lil said with a smirk, ‘I think we have even more detailed data here, and better variety of data, and they just give it all over. It’s pretty incredible. I mean look at all these patterns we’ve been able to catalogue already.’

‘Hm…’ Evie agreed as she frowned over her augmented reality screen, ‘oh that’s it,’ she quickly wrote formulae into the data with her finger using in symbols no one on Earth except her sister and a certain traitorous angel could recognise. The data instantly transformed, another pattern emerging.

‘Oh, nice!’ Lil said with a smile, looking at the changes on her own augmented reality screen, ‘let’s push that one out there too. See if we get any takers.’

‘Thanks,’ Evie smiled pleased with herself.

Lil put all of the patterns they’d found so far up on the freelance data analysis site for companies to purchase. So far, they’d simply been exploring the data, getting a feel for it and learning to navigate it. But they figured they may as well earn some money for their trouble. It did come in handy on Earth.

Lil sighed as the formula uploaded, ‘you were always better at this stuff.’

Evie snorted, ‘I’m more persistent. That’s all. I think we understand the data now. We’ve done enough exploration. Let’s see what insights we can find in the data to help solve our problem.’

Lil nodded, ‘alright,’ but then she noticed the time, ‘oh!’ Lil exclaimed, flicking off her UD glasses, ‘I’ve got a shift! Ethan will be waiting for me. Oh, I’m sorry Evie. Can you start on that without me?’

Evie, slipped off her own UD glasses so she could make direct eye contact with Lil. She raised an eyebrow and smiled knowingly, ‘That’s fine. Can’t keep Ethan waiting.’

Lil felt a warmth spread across her cheeks, ‘it’s not like that. It’s a shift. He needs me to help with the dogs.’ It was exactly like that. Damn. Why did Evie have to know her so well?

Evie nodded with mock seriousness, ‘Oh, yes, the dogs. Will noone think of the dogs?’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Lil said rubbing at her warm face with her hands.

‘I was agreeing with you,’ Evie said with arms raised, ‘After all, you have a shift.’

‘As if you don’t fancy Mia,’ Lil spat out with narrowed eyes.

Evie choked and her own face grew hot, ‘I… I don’t…that’s…I barely know…’

Lil laughed, ‘You’re so transperant. You might be able to read me easily, but I can read you just as easily.’

‘You’ll be late! Get out of here!’ Evie deflected.

‘I’ll be late!’ Lil cried, darting about the flat looking for her shoes. She finally found them kicked off in her bedroom. She pulled on some socks and slipped her shoes on. She blew Evie a kiss as she ran out the door calling out, ‘see ya! Good luck with the data!’

Evie returned to the data, exploring it in a whole new way, pushing at the data and asking it the question: what went wrong with the world? The data didn’t easily give up its secrets. This was a bit different to simply identifying a pattern that you could put up for sale. Evie carved up the data this way and that, identifying pattern after pattern, cataloging them and frowning over them. She worked busily for hours, time slipping by as she was so throughly occupied. The sun setting, darkness spreading, made her aware of the time. She looked over her day’s work one more time and noted on the file her general conclusion: humans do stupid things. Then she saved it.

Evie yawned as flicked off her AR glasses and rubbed her eyes. Lil would be home soon. Evie should make something for dinner. Pasta maybe? They’d bought bottles of pre-made pasta sauce at the shops and had mastered a basic pasta dish. Evie walked into the kitchen and put some water on to boil. As she waited she got out the ingredients and chopped a few vegetables to go in it. She felt off. Something wasn’t right. She felt whoozy and sluggish and, well, just off.

She put the pasta on to boil and put the sauce and vegetables into another pan. When Lil came home she found Evie in the kitchen clutching at her stomach.

‘You okay, Evie?’ Lil said with a worried frown.

Evie shook her head, ‘No. It hurts.’

‘Where?’

Evie pointed to her lower abdomen, ‘Here. It, argh…’

‘Right. Well, go lie down on the couch. I’ll finish dinner and we’ll go from there.’

Evie nodded and wandered into the living room collapsing on the couch. She was soon curled up in a ball, clutching at her abdomen.

Lil finished the dinner and dished it up, bringing it into the living room and putting the two bowls onto the coffee table.

Evie sat up and picked at her food.

‘Still hurting?’ Lil asked, her own food still sitting on the coffee table as she watched Evie closely.

Evie nodded.

Lil frowned and slipped her UD glasses on bringing up google in augmented reality. She began to search, picking up her own bowl of pasta and eating as she did so, ‘could be lots of things: appendicitis, Crohn’s disease, a growth, stomach flu. Huh. We could go to the hospital, see a doctor? They can figure out exactly what’s wrong.’

Evie sighed, her eyes fluttering closed. ‘Maybe.’ She opened her eyes again and got up, ‘just going to the bathroom.’

Lil kept eating her dinner, worried about Evie and scrolling through the possibilities on her UD: ectopic pregnancy, urinary tract infection, menstrual cramps… She flicked to each, reading in greater depth and trying to get her head around the complicated inner workings of the human body.

Evie stumbled back out with tears in her eyes.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lil said horrified.

‘Lil, there’s,’ Evie whispered, ‘there’s blood.’

‘Where?’ Lil asked with a frown.

‘On my underwear,’ Evie whispered.

‘Oh. Wait.’ Lil brought up the list of possibilities and flicked back through. She sighed. ‘That’s a good thing, Evie. You’re just menstruating. Look, it is normal,’ she began to read out, ‘every month the female body prepares for pregnancy. If pregnancy does not occur then the uterus sheds its lining. The lining and menstrual blood passes out of the body through the vagina. Some women experience abdominal cramping pain, lower back pain, bloating, irritability or fatigue.’

Evie frowned, collapsing back on the couch, ‘this is menstruation? But it’s awful…’

‘Afraid so,’ Lil replied, ‘hm… I wonder if I’ll menstruate soon too.’

‘Lil,’ Evie said, ‘you are sure all of this,’ she waved over her body, ‘is normal?!’

‘Yeah,’ Lil listed, looking through the entry on mensturation again, ‘every symptom is here.’

Evie groaned, ‘I didn’t realise it’d hurt so much. Talk about a design flaw. Why did the Almighty give us this?’

Lil did some more googling, ‘Huh. Well, there’s some who blame it on your namesake, actually. A kind of punishment for eating the apple. Oh, and apparently painful childbirth too. That’s also part of the punishment.’

Evie scoffed at this.

‘Ah. Plenty of stuff about it being impure too,’ Lil continued, ‘Ha. Lots of rules.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I remember reading those,’ Evie replied, ‘something about whoever touches a mentruaing woman is unclean, and everything she sits on or lies on is unclean. Leviticus something or other.’

‘Wow,’ Lil snorted, ‘well, you can certainly tell that it was men who got to write it all down, huh.

There’s some whacky shit out there.’

Evie nodded.

‘Ah,’ Lil grinned, ‘here’s the useful stuff. You can take medication for the pain. And something called a heat pack works too. Oh, and there’s different ways of catching the blood. Um… cups and pads and tampons, whatever that is, and special underwear. I’ve just got to go to um… a pharmacy? Right, you stay here and I’ll go get everything you need, okay?’

Evie nodded and curled up on the couch in the foetal position, ‘Thanks, Lil. You’re the best.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twenty days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Morgan watched her mum shuffle the index cards—prophesy on each—that she’d painstakingly typed up. They were sitting around the kitchen table as a family, a cup of tea for each of them, discussing Agnes Nutter’s second book of prophesies and how they were going to make sense of them.

‘Mum, no offence,’ Morgan said with a little sigh, ‘I mean clearly our ancestors worked out the best solution at the time, with the resources they had to work with, and the cataloguing system sounds really er… well like it really catalogues the hell out of the prophesies. But I’m thinking we need a higher-tech solution.’

Anathema frowned, looking up from the cards, ‘higher tech?’

‘Well, it certainly sounds like something big, something really big, is going to happen very soon. But while you had the benefits of generations of ancestors slowly hacking away at the prophesies, we have to make some kind of sense of what’s going to happen as soon as possible.’

Newt nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose with his index finger, ‘She’s got a point. I mean no one was using index cards thirty years ago even.’

Anathema glared at him, then turned back to Morgan with a friendlier look, ‘What’s your idea, love?’

Morgan took a deep breath, ‘We crowd source it. Dump the whole thing on the internet. Get people to give their thoughts and up-vote on the best insights. We search through the cream of what the crowd gave us and combine _that_ with your wisdom, with your knowledge of Agnes Nutter.’

Anathema nodded, turning the idea over in her mind carefully. She could see no reason not to, ‘yeah sure. Why not?’

Morgan grinned, absolutely delighted that her idea won her mother’s approval, ‘I’ll get started on the website. Oh, thanks mum!’

Morgan jumped up, clapped her hands in delight and rushed upstairs to her bedroom to start working it.

Anathema sighed deeply. She turned to Newt, tears prickling at her eyes, ‘did we do the wrong thing? Burning the book? If we hadn’t, if I’d been studying it all this time, Morgan would have the benefits of my years of work now. I thought I was saving her. Instead I’ve left her without the inheritance I enjoyed.’

Newt put his cup of tea down and tenderly ran his hand over Anathema’s face cupping it in his hands, ‘we did what we thought was best at the time. You did what was right for you. What was right for you, for your own life. You have a right to live your life. Never regret that, my love. Never.’

Anathema nodded, a little frown on her face. She leaned forward and kissed Newt. He ran his hand down her hair, ‘it’s going to be alright, love.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's several Biblical verses on menstruation. The key one that Evie is remembering is this:
> 
> ‘When a woman has a discharge, if her discharge in her body is blood, she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything also on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. Anyone who touches her bed shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening' Leviticus 15:19-23


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Aziraphale has a plan to test if the metaphysical changes to the universe back-date and potentially save some souls from Hell. Crowley is not pleased. 
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Evie works as a Wellness Facilitator at The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home. So does Mia.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eighteen days until The Big One**

**A Bentley approaching South Downs at miraculous speed**

‘Why does the Bentley always play this particular bebop artist, again?’ Aziraphale asked, looking out at the rapidly disappearing English countryside, ‘a bit of mischief gone wrong I think you said?’ He turned to Crowley, eyes wide, waiting for his answer.

Crowley snorted, gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and shook his head in disgust. ‘Bebop artist? It’s Queen. You know it’s Queen.’

Aziraphale shrugged turning back to look out the window to mask a little smile, ‘remind me why, my dear.’

Crowley took his eyes off the road and looked across to Aziraphale. His angel kept staring out of the window, sitting up straight in the passenger seat as he tended to do, looking all prim and proper. Crowley sighed and his gaze shifted back to the road. He started to recall, ‘It was the early 1980s. I’d always liked Queen,’ he shrugged, ‘their Greatest Hits album was huge. It was everywhere. Anyway, I got drunk,’ he paused recalling that his drinking had been sparked by a particularly depressing departmental meeting. He’d wanted to find Aziraphale immediately afterwards and get plastered together but Aziraphale had been particularly full of Heavenly bulllshit the last time he’d seen him and Crowley had known that he was in no fit state to listen to that so he had decided to get drunk solo instead. Crowley swallowed down that bit of the story, ‘Anyway, I got drunk, yeah? And I decided to amuse myself with a bit of mischief: any tape left in any car for over a fortnight would turn into Queen’s greatest hits.’

‘How’s that good for Hell?’ Aziraphale asked, still looking out the window, a little smile playing about his lips.

Crowley shrugged, ‘Dunno. ‘d have come up with something if they’d have ever asked. It was a laugh. I was drunk, remember? Anyway, eventually, I realised I didn’t build an escape clause in for the Bentley. Meant to. Forgot. Drunk. Can’t remove it. Not many cars that were on the road in 1980 are still on the road and if they are they don’t have a tape deck anymore. And in the Bentley it applies to any form of music: CD players, MP3 players. Anything. Do not know why. So now, probably the only car that turns everything into Queen is this one.’

‘That is quite amusing,’ Aziraphale chuckled to himself, looking over at Crowley fondly, ‘you do seem to have a pattern of catching yourself in your own mischief, don’t you?’

‘Hm…’ Crowley muttered glaring back at Aziraphale playfully but saying nothing. After all, it was true. Dammnit. Crowley turned back to the road again, ‘I spent most of the 1990s hating it but ‘m kinda used to it now. Wouldn’t be the Bentley without it.’

‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t,’ Aziraphale smiled affectionately, his hand caressing the dashboard tenderly.

‘Oi!’ Crowley said with a frown, ‘not too much with the affection. You’ll give it ideas.’

Azraiphale chuckled, ‘I’m pretty sure we did that on our last picnic.’

Crowly snorted.

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale lit up with delight as a new song began, ‘it used to play this song all the time, just as I’d get in the car.’

Crowley kept his eyes quite carefully to the road, as a little pink spread across his cheeks. ‘Somebody to love? Jus’ one of the tracks on the album.’

‘But it was always playing when I’d get in the car and then that one about being best friends and then the lover boy one,’ Azraiphale recalled his fingers drumming on the dash, ‘then fat-bottomed girls. Well, often anyway. Very often.’

‘I’ve always known you knew the songs,’ Crowley drawled.

‘Why’d it do that? Why’d it stop?’ Aziraphale said a little wrickle appearing on his forehead as he tried to puzzle it out, completing igoring Crowley’s comment, ‘Oh, have you put it on shamble?’

‘Shamble?’ Crowley repeated, his eyes flicking to Aziraphale, eyebrows twisting in confusion, ‘Oh, you mean shuffle,’ he continued, gaze flicking back to the road. He snorted, ‘No, it isn’t on shuffle, angel. It just decides.’

‘So why did it used to play the songs in that order?’ Aziraphale insisted, ‘That isn’t the order on record then?’

Crowley’s eyes darted to Aziraphale and back, ‘CD, angel. Well, first tape, then CD. Never record,’ he sighed, ‘It did it ‘cause the Bentley is an interfering shit. It stopped ‘cause it thinks its interference worked.’

Aziraphale turned and looked at Crowley carefully, releasing that he was serious. He laughed, little happy crinkles appearing around his blue eyes, ‘that’s ridiculous, Crowley.’

Crowley shrugged, ‘you asked. You got any better theories?’

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip as he gave this some thought. He could think of a better theory, actually. He’d long since speculated that they sometimes had unconscious effects on the world around them. He’d even discussed these speculations with Crowley at length on several occasions and Crowley had found it all plausible enough. But if Crowley didn’t realise that his car’s musical preferences were a reflection of his own desires, well, Aziraphale didn’t particularly want to be the one to point that out. He’d rather simply use the music as a convenient way to keep abreast of Crowley’s feelings. So Aziraphale shook his head, ‘perhaps you’re right, dear.’

The Bentley roared up the driveway of their cottage. They wandered in together, Aziphrale clicking his fingers to unlock the front door, and Crowley clicking his fingers to lock the doors of the car.

Crowley automatically slipped his sunglasses off. Then he realised that they needed to discuss Azraiphale’s new plan with the spirits, ‘Talk to Arthur straight away, angel?’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Let’s.’

Crowley flicked his sunglasses back on and opened the glass doors to the garden, moving out amongst the spirits. Aziraphale quickly followed.

Jimmy floated forward, keen to tell Crowley about his latest exerpiments with interacting with the physical world. Several of the spirits were getting rather good at it. Crowley nodded politely and recommended several more pranks, making Jimmy giggle with delight, ‘Oh, Kai will love that one! Nice!’

Eventually, Crowley and Azraiphale found Arthur and beckoned him for a private conversation at the cottage doors.

Crowley clicked his fingers, miracling the couch to the door. Azraiphale perched on one side primly, and Crowley slouched on the other side.

‘Crowley. Aziraphale.’ Arthur floated about in the lavender just outside the glass doors nodding, well, as much as a spirit can be said to nod, ‘how was your bookshop?’

‘Very nice, thank you my good fellow,’ Aziraphale replied with a wide smile, ‘and while I was there I had somewhat of an idea.’

‘Oh?’ Arthur asked.

‘Jus’ so we’re clear at the outset,’ Crowley quickly interrupted, ‘it is a dangerous idea and Aziraphale would be risking his life.’

‘Crowley!’ Aziraphale tutted, frowning in displeasure, ‘stop that. You’ll quite put him off before he even knows what the idea is.’

Crowley’s eyes widened mockingly. That was, after all, the general idea. ‘He has a right to know, angel.’

‘I agree. I do have a right to know that,’ Arthur chimed up, ‘we should all be making an informed decision here, Aziraphale.’

Crowley gestured widely towards Arthur as if to say: see, he gets it.

Aziraphale tutted again and rolled his eyes.

‘What’s the idea?’ Arthur asked.

‘Well, there’s no way to rescue the population of Hell at large—debates about whether or not it is morally right to rescue literally everyone aside—it is written into the metaphysical laws of the universe and although we’ve accidentally changed them once we haven’t the least idea how to deliberately change them again…’

‘Yeah, you said,’ Arthur replied, floating about, ‘a shame, but I quite understand.’

‘But, the question is, exactly how much has _already_ changed,’ Aziraphale continued with a little excited wiggle as he got to the crux of his idea, ‘what I mean is, do the metaphysical changes back date? If they do, perhaps there are some souls that we could save from Hell after all.’

‘Oh…’ Arthur said, ‘Oh, I follow. That’s rather clever actually. And how would we get them, exactly? How does that work?’

‘Well,’ Aziraphle beamed in delight, ‘we’d start with a test case: a friend or relative of someone here. Someone who both died before we became metaphysically our own side and was clearly someone who would end up here if they died now. I’d present at Hell’s accounts department masquerading as an envoy from Heaven with a query about an accounting error. Happens every so often. They’d check the status of the test case and if the soul no longer belongs in Hell we will know it backdates. I’ll request a general audit and, well, there we go,’ Aziraphale ended his exaplantion with another excited wiggle.

‘To be clear,’ Crowley drawled, ‘that’s when it’ll be really dangerous for Aziraphale. You see, occasional errors happen, especially when the death rate is particularly high. Everyone makes mistakes. Even Death. But requesting a general audit that then turns up, what, thousands of souls as incorrectly in Hell? Hundreds of thousands? Never happened before. We don’t know exactly what they’ll do.’

Aziraphale continued to beam but at the same time he wrung his hands and his voice was a little shaky as he replied, ‘Oh, I’m sure it’ll be fine…’

Arthur nodded carefully, taking it all in, ‘Aziraphale, I must say, I’m deeply touched that you would consider doing this for us.’

Aziraphale went a little pink, his eyes darting away, ‘quite alright, dear fellow. It is the right thing to do.’

‘I’ll put it to a vote and I’ll make the danger to Aziraphale clear, Crowley. Thank-you, Aziraphale,’ Arthur said. Then he floated away to organise an immediate democratic vote.

Aziraphale looked to Crowley, still wringing his hands, ‘I just told him what I was going to do. Why are they going to vote on it?’

Crowley shrugged, ‘Dunno. Human stuff. They like to think they are control.’

Crowley clicked his fingers and the glass doors shut, the couch zooming back a little out of the way. Crowley turned to Aziraphale, flicked his sunglasses off and and took Aziraphale’s hands in his own. Aziraphale looked deep into those golden eyes, finding the gold spreading out a little, pushing towards the edge. Crowley ran his thumb over Aziraphale’s hand, ‘you really sure you have to do this?’

Aziraphale nodded sadly, his lips pressing together, ‘quite sure.’

Crowley sighed. He tendlerly caressed Aziraphale’s face, tracing an invisible line from his brow down to his chin, ‘you make it hard sometimes, you know, loving you…’

Aziraphale smiled his eyes brimming with tears, ‘I know. And you are sure that you have to come with me? There’s no reason to risk your life.’

'There is. You know there is,’ Crowley choked out, ‘We live or die together.’

A little tear slipped down Aziraphale’s face and he quickly wiped it away, ‘You make it hard sometimes too.’

Crowley smiled and brought Aziraphale’s hands up to his mouth to kiss them.

‘You’ll have to have an excellent disguise,’ Aziraphale added with a sniff.

‘Oh,‘ll be well hidden. I have an idea.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eighteen days until The Big One**

**The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, London**

‘You alright, Evie?’ Mia said with a concerned frown.

‘Hm?’ Evie replied, looking up from where she was hunched over her UD screen in the recreational room, trying to make sense of the residients timetables, ‘yeah, fine.’ She deliberately straightened up, attempting to look perfectly fine. A fresh cramp made her wince and hunch over again.

‘You sick?’ Mia asked, chewing at her bottom lip in worry.

‘Na. Not sick Just a bit um…’ she gestured over her stomach. What had Lil called it again? The modern scientific sounding word… ‘I’m menstruating.’

‘Oh,’ Mia said with a smile of recognition, ‘yeah, that’s hell.’

Evie laughed, ‘Oh, let me assure you, Mia, _this_ does not happen in Hell.’

Mia looked at her curiously, trying to figure out the joke. Eventually she decided to let it go. ‘Hang on,’ Mia said as she dug through her bag, eventually pulling out a strip of pain medication, ‘here you go.’

As Evie took the medication from Mia their fingers brushed. Evie could feel her cheeks burn up and hoped Mia didn’t notice.

Mia smiled. ‘Oh, you need water, hold on.’ Mia ducked over to the water dispenser in the corner of the room and returned with a cup of water.

‘Thanks,’ Evie replied, popping two white pills and taking the medication with the water. She returned the rest of the strip to Mia and Mia put it back in her bag.

‘You like music?’ Mia asked as she returned the mediation to her bag, nervously twisting a little fly-away piece of her pixie cut around her finger.

Evie thought of the music she knew—the celestial harmonies of Heaven, the Sound of Music soundtrack that all of the angels seemed obsessed with, and the wild drumming beats that the demons liked to dance to— and she shrugged, ‘Dunno. Haven’t listened to much, really.’

‘Right. Would you like to?’ Mia asked, her eyes wide and hopeful.

Evie shrugged again, ‘Dunno. Maybe. I’m trying to learn everything I can about the world.’

Mia smiled, little dimples appearing in her cheeks, ‘Yeah, me too. So, there’s going to be this free concert in the park on Saturday. Looks good. I’m keen to go. Best way to learn about music, seeing it live.’

Evie nodded. That made sense.

‘Course, it’d be better if I had someone to go with,’ Mia stumbled on.

‘Right,’ Evie answered. That also made sense. Most things were better with company. Humans were social creatures after all.

Mia blushed and cleared her throat, ‘so if you um… know of anyone who might want to go just um…let me know I guess.’

Evie nodded again, ‘Sure. I will.’

‘Right,’ Mia chewed at her bottom lip and cleared her throat, ‘Back to work then I guess.’ She quickly slipped back out of the community room.

Evie’s eyes followed her as she left, drawn to the way her hips swayed as she walked. When Mia left Evie became aware that Glenn and Fiona were staring right at her, their chess game neglected. They were both smiling widely.

Glenn shook his head and snorted, ‘you are a doofus, Evie. An absolute doofus.’

‘What?’ Evie said, face twisting in confusion.

‘Mia was trying to ask you out,’ Glenn explained impatiently.

‘Ask me out?’ Evie repeated with a frown.

Glenn shook his head again and laughed.

Fiona smiled indulgently, ‘Mia wants _you_ to go with her to the concert. She wants to get to know you better. She likes you. Maybe as a friend. Maybe as something more.’

Glenn snorted, ‘Definitely as something more. We can all see it. Don’t pretend you can’t see it, Fi.’

‘She does?’ Evie said, absolutely shocked, looking back to the empty door Mia had just left through.

Fiona sighed and turned to Glenn, ‘were we ever that young and stupid?’

‘Young, yes, stupid, no,’ Glenn said in reply. Then he turned to Evie, ‘for Heaven’s sake, Evie. Go after her and say you’ll go to the damn concert.’

‘Right. Right,’ Evie remained frozen for a moment trying to compel her body into action. Then, she was moving at speed out of the community hall, weaving her way around the residences, looking for Mia. She caught up to her just as she was about to go to knock on a residient’s door. Mia turned. Evie’s breath caught in her throat.

‘I want to go to the concert!’ Evie shouted in a rush, ‘With you. I want to go to the concert with you.’

Mia’s face lit up, ‘you do? Good. Real good. I’ll send you the details, yeah?’

Evie nodded and stumbled away, knees weak and a ridiculous grin on her face.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eighteen days until The Big One**

**Hogback Wood, Tadfield**

‘Dog! Dog! C’m here!’

Dog’s ears instantly pricked up and he tore through the wood, leaping over logs, swerving around trees, straight to the side of his master. He was a hell hound. But he barely remembered that. This was not, at all, the life he had expected to lead. It was so much better.

‘There you are, Dog! You know you aren’t meant to wander that far,’ Adam said as he heaped affection on him, scratching him around the ear just the way he liked it. ‘C’mon, Dog. Best go home.’

They began walking, man and dog, side by side, through the wood towards the cottage that had been Adam’s home since he had moved out of his parents’. Adam had never harboured any ambitions about moving away from Tadfield and he was quite sure he never would. He loved this place.

‘Adam! Adam! You here?’ a highly recognisable female voice called out through the woods.

‘Pepper?’ Adam answered his voice buzzing with happiness at the surprise.

‘Adam! I knew you’d be in here at this time,’ Pepper said as she appeared from behind a tree, ‘Old habits and all.’

Adam smiled. He rushed forward and threw his arms around her, squeezing her tightly. She hugged him back just as tight.

‘What are you doing here, Pepper?’ Adam said into Pepper’s hair.

‘Visiting mum,’ Pepper said with a smile, ‘was hoping to visit you too. I messaged you to tell you I was coming but I can see why you’ve been ignoring me,’ Pepper pulled away from the hug and shook Adam’s arm, an arm that very unusually did not have a universal device attached to it. 

‘Oh. Yeah. I’ve been in the zone this week,’ Adam replied sheepishly with a shrug.

Pepper shook her head and tutted, ‘you know you can both write and keep in touch with the world at the same time.’

Adam laughed. ‘I can’t. You _know_ I can’t. When I’m in the zone I’ve got to do the hermit thing. Only way. Anyway, I don’t like those things.’

Pepper snorted skeptically and bent down to greet Dog. She knew the perfect scratching spot too. They started slowly walking through the woods together, returning to Adam’s cottage. Pepper sighed as her whole childhood seemed to return to her at once. This was it. This was what childhood had been for her. Hogback wood with Adam. Well, Adam, Brain and Wensleydale. But, yeah, this was it. So many happy memories.

‘What’s the latest about then?’ Pepper asked with a grin, slipping an arm into Adam’s.

‘A vampire who takes up piracy,’ Adam replied.

Pepper stopped walking and gave Adam a cutting look.

‘It’s better than it sounds,’ Adam said his hands up in a defensive posture.

‘I certainly hope so. It sounds dreadful,’ Pepper said with a grimace.

‘Hey! I’m a bestselling author I’ll have you know.’

‘Doesn’t mean you aren’t also a dickhead,’ Pepper said with smirk.

‘Ha! True enough,’ Adam laughed, ‘so how’s Phoebe and Poppy? They with you?’

‘Poppy is. She’s with mum, getting some grandmotherly attention. Phoebe is in Paris for a conference,’ Pepper shrugged, ‘that’s why I thought I’d visit.’

They continued walking, Dog keeping pace at Adam’s side.

‘You seen the others lately?’ Pepper said.

‘Brian was here not long ago. He’s thinking of moving back, actually. I’m not sure Chloe is fully on board though. Might happen, might not. We’ll see.’

‘Oh, yeah? That’d be good,’ Pepper replied, ‘I still catch up with Wensleydale pretty often. He’s doing well too. His business is booming apparently. Taxes, taxes and more taxes. Must be so boring. He still seems excited by it. Makes a fortune, of course. Not that he knows how to spend it. Well, apart from spoiling his kids rotten.’

‘Well, we can’t all make a living saving the world, Pepper,’ Adam said with a smile.

Pepper snorted and rolled her eyes, ‘Hardly. Ridiculous little NGO that it is. Drives me wild. Sometimes I think I’ll just give up and let the planet burn. Toast marshmallows over the roaring fire.’

Adam chuckled to himself, ‘oh yeah, like that’s gonna happen.’

They approached the edge of the wood.

‘Well, Mr Bestselling author who is officially in the zone,’ Pepper said with a smile, ‘have you got time for a drink with an old friend? Wouldn’t want to get in the way of a vampire pirate. I imagine that could be quite dangerous.’

‘Always,’ Adam said with warm affection, his eyes crinkling as he smiled, ‘I always have time for you, Pepper.’

Pepper beamed. It was always good to see Adam.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Aziraphale has a plan to test if the metaphysical changes to the universe back-date and potentially save some souls from Hell. 
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Evie has been trying to find a solution by analysing the data from everyone's UDs.
> 
> Pepper wants Adam to check his UD more often.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Sixteen days until The Big One**

**A London flat**

‘Right. We gotta get serious about all this,’ Lil announced loudly as she barged through their front door, a paper bag of bottles clinking in her hand.

Evie looked up from the augmented reality screen in front of her, her eyes dancing with afterimages of data and formulae. She squinted at Lil, slipped her augmented reality glasses off and sat them on the coffee table in front of her.

‘Serious?’ Evie said with a yawn, rubbing her eyes.

Lil sat the paper bag down on the kitchen bench and began to take the bottles out one at a time, ‘Serious. We’re running out of time. Our forty days is almost up.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Evie replied, ‘why do you think I’ve been trolling through this data day and night?’

Lil bit her lip, ‘Yeah, that’s my point. You’ve been knee-deep in that stuff for ages now and you haven’t got a solution.’

‘The data was your idea!’ Evie growled, frustrated.

‘Yeah, I know, I know,’ Lil said, arms raised defensively, ‘and I’m not saying don’t look at it at all, just…’ she paused, sighed and walked into the lounge, sitting next to Evie on the couch, ‘okay, no that’s fair enough. Give me an update then. What have you found?’

Evie nodded chewing her bottom lip anxiously, ‘right,’ she sighed and smoothed out her skirt, ‘humans do stupid things, like a lot of stupid things.’

‘Okay, right,’ Lil nodded.

‘Not just mean things or cruel things,’ Evie continued a little more confidently, ‘they do things that aren’t in their own self-interest. Like, obviously so.’

Lil nodded, ‘Hm. Why would they do that?’

Evie shrugged, ‘I don’t know. It’s like, they don’t learn from their own mistakes or something.’

‘Hm. So if we found a way to help them learn form their mistakes that’d be good, huh?’ Lil said tapping a long finger against her chin as she considered this.

‘I don’t see how it could hurt,’ Evie replied, ‘but the other thing is the rules. So, remember we figured that some of the rules in the Bible didn’t come from the Almighty?’

‘Yeah, the little stupid ones,’ Lil snorted.

‘Exactly!’ Evie beamed, ‘but I think the big important rules _do_ come from the Almighty.’ Evie opened up her foldable screen so they could both see the data she’d been looking at. She touched the screen a few times, manipulating the data, ‘look at this,’ she said pointing to the pattern, ‘see the convergence?’

Evie leaned forward and frowned. Then she smiled in recognition, ‘ah. Do not kill.’

‘Exactly! Again and again, humans forbid the killing of other humans. And here’s the thing,’ Evie continued with enthusiasm, ‘when a society forbids killing, when they contain it, effectively implementing that rule, then that society does better. Forbid killing and you flourish! So I think that rule, and maybe all the big ones, come from God herself.’ She smiled proudly.

‘Huh,’ Lil exclaimed, sitting back. She pointed at the side of the screen, ‘what’s this stuff then?’

‘Ah. Well, killing humans outside of your own society is a little different. That can benefit the society,’ Evie frowned, ‘in fact the most successful societies ban killing within the society but they do kill people from other societies.’

‘War?’

‘Yes, I don’t understand how that fits,’ Evie sighed.

‘Maybe the Almighty never intended for there to be separate societies?’ Lil asked, ‘there wasn’t at first, was there?’

‘Maybe,’ Evie nodded, a little crease on her forehead as she thought this through.

‘Or maybe that’s the fault, huh? Maybe ‘cause they aren’t punished for killing people outside their own society we’re stuck with it,’ Lil continued, ‘maybe we’ve got to bring that into line or something.’

Evie chewed her lip as she thought this through, ‘maybe. I’m mean God couldn’t be alright with people killing people as long as they’re from different countries. That doesn’t make sense.’

‘You know what?,’ Lil replied with a frown, ‘I don’t have a clue what God thinks but I do know this: we are meant to roll in the filth of the world and we haven’t tried alcohol yet,’ she clapped her hands and rubbed them together joyfully, ‘so I have bought us red wine, champagne and tequila, whatever that is. I’ll get us some glasses.’

Several hours later, Lil was pouring them both another glass of red. She stumbled slightly as she carried the full glasses from the kitchen bench to the lounge room. She handed Evie hers and collapsed onto the couch beside her, only just managing to refrain from spilling any.

‘Like this one,’ Lil said taking a swig, ‘Better than the one with the bubbles... Better than the other…thing…’ she eyes narrowed as she tried to recall its name, ‘whatever that was.’

‘Tequilie, Tequilie…’ Evie replied with difficulty, finally getting it with a shout, ‘Tequila!’

‘That’s the one!’ Lil replied, trying and failing to click her fingers.

‘Hmm…I liked the bubbles,’ Evie hummed taking another swig out of her glass, ‘You know, they all taste warm. Can a drink taste warm?’

Lil frowned, her nose crinkling up and shook her head, ‘Doesn’t sound right,’ she sipped her drink, ‘oh, it does though. It burns… Like, I dunno liquid fire or something.’

Evie broke into a fit of giggles, ‘sounds like something the demons should be drinking…’

Lil snorted. She did not ever, _ever_ want to see a drunk demon. They were unhinged enough in their natural state.

‘There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense,’ Evie said with a sudden wistful melancholy. She frowned as if trying to hold onto a profound thought— a thought she was grasping the edges of with all the desperation of a drowing man— but it fell through her fingers. Eventually, she just turned to Lil, ‘right?’

‘Oh. Yeah. A lotta stuff. Platy, platy… platypuses for a start. Wait? Platypie?’ Lil tried to remember through the alcohol induced haze, ‘whatever. They are weird with their duck bills and eggs and pouches. What the fuck was God thinking?’ 

Evie giggled again and Lil started laughing too. They laughed until they choked and coughed.

Just as suddenly they weren’t laughing anymore. A hopeless mood settled over then both, its dark tendrils curling into their hearts and digging its way deep into the space between them.

Evie sighed, ‘Oh, Lil, what are we going to do? How’re we gonna fix the world?’

Lil snorted, ‘Dunno. I don’t know. And if we can’t, then what?’

Evie shivered, remembering the terror of seeing the Archangel’s faces twisted in divine wrath. They both knew that if they didn’t fix the world their lives were on the line. Not just their lives, their eternal souls. They would be punished for certain, and punished for all eternity. The only question was exactly how.

Lil reached across and patted Evie’s knee. Evie smiled sadly and wrapped her arms around Lil.

‘I just hope they keep us together,’ Evie said into Lil’s shoulder with a little gasp.

‘We’re not even thinking about that,’ Lil said with the sudden courage her sister’s fear often gave her. If Evie was in a moment of weakness, then Lil had to be strong, ‘we’re gonna come up with a plan, and when we get our powers back we are going to do that plan and it’ll fix the world.’

‘Okay,’ Evie said quietly as Lil squeezed her. Lil let Evie go, sitting back and reaching out for her hand instead. They sat together quietly for a time, holding holds.

‘You know,’ Lil broke through the silence, ‘maybe then we could just be human? Just, I dunno, live.’

‘That’d be nice,’ Evie said with a sad smile. Growing up in Heaven and Hell she’d never wanted to be human. She’d never wanted an ordinary life. But now, now she wanted it so badly she could taste it.

‘Maybe,’ Lil said, her mouth dry, ‘maybe, if we don’t come up with something we can just run away. Make a life for ourselves somewhere. We’d never get our powers back but…’

Evie’s eyes welled up with tears, ‘we can’t, Lil. They’d find us for sure. But, anyway, we _have_ to fix this. They’ve got it all muddled but us fixing it _is_ God’s plan. I’m sure of it.’

Lil looked deep into Evie’s dark eyes for a moment, ‘Why won’t she answer you then?’

Evie shook her head, a single tear rolling down her face, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’

Lil squeezed Evie’s hand and another silent moment rolled by.

‘Power’s a curse if you don’t know what to do with it,’ Lil declared, ‘I’d rather be an ordinary human and know what the fuck I’m meant to do.’

Evie wiped away her tears. ‘What do you want, Lil? Like, forget about fixing anything. What do _you_ want the world to be like?’

Oh, now that was a new idea. Lil gave this some thought. Then she smiled, ‘I’d like more dog parks.’ 

Evie laughed. ‘Yeah. Dog parks. Cool.’

‘You?’

Evie considered it, ‘Well, I like chips. Still the best thing we’ve eaten. I want to eat more chips.’

‘And this warm drink thing, it’s nice…’ Lil whispered.

‘And games,’ Evie smiled thinking of Glenn and Teresa, ‘board games, card games, they’re good, aren’t they? More games.’

‘And jokes, even your stupid ones that aren’t funny…’ Lil said with a little smirk.

‘Hey!’ Evie replied with mock outrage, ‘all my jokes are funny!’

‘And more marmalade,’ Lil continued, ‘Like marmalade. People _should_ eat it from the jar. I’d make that a thing.’

The conversation lulled and Lil tapped out a little rhythm on the side of her glass as she plucked up the courage. They were running out of time. And unless they managed to fix the world, these forty days and nights might be the only life they’d get. Lil didn’t have Evie’s faith that it was all God’s plan. It could be. Could be. But who knows? Lil didn’t want to neglect any opportunities in the meantime. Lil took a deep swig from her glass and announced definitely, ‘I wanna try fornication with Ethan.’

Evie smirked her dark eyes glinting knowingly.

‘Don’t you dare laugh,’ Lil said forcefully, ‘We are meant to roll in the filth of the world. We should try fornication. They prolly expect it. And, more importantly, we are running out of time. Forty days of a normal human life could be all we’ll get.’ 

Evie sighed deeply, running her hands over her face, ‘You’re right. Anyway, I wanna try it with Mia.’

Lil snorted, ‘I knew it. How do you suppose…’ Lil’s voice trailed off.

Evie raised an eyebrow.

‘How do I…’ Lil frowned, ‘I mean do you just ask?’

Evie’s forehead creased as she tried to figure out this particular puzzle, ‘I guess. Couldn’t hurt to try?’

‘Hm…’ Lil hummed, heart hammering in her chest. It didn’t feel like it couldn’t hurt. It felt like it could rip her guts out. But she was running out of time. She had to ask. She had to.

Evie looked away, ‘you um… you know?’

‘What?’ Lil replied.

‘Try anything, you know?’ Evie said, looking down at her glass as she swirled the wine around.

‘What?’

Evie sighed. ‘On your own?’

‘Oh! No. Shit. Should I?’ Lil’s eyes widened. She leaned forward, ‘Wait, have you?’

Evie shrugged and and nodded. Her face flushed with an uncomfortable warmth and she kept her gaze fixed on her glass. She took a long sip.

‘Wow. Worth trying?’

Evie nodded, moving her glass a little and watching the red liquid swirl, the firey red liquid that was warming her up inside.

‘Wow,’ Lil gulped down more of the red. She stumbled into the kitchen to retrieve the bottle, pouring the rest of it into their glasses. It sloshed right in.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Sixteen days until The Big One**

**A side street near the official entrance to Heaven and Hell**

Aziraphale pushed his long hair back out of his face again. He’d forgotten how annoying long hair could be. This is why he kept his short whenever possible.

‘Here,’ Crowley said with a tender smile as his fingers deftly braided Aziraphale’s hair. It wasn’t Aziraphale’s usual white-blonde colour, instead it was a deep dark brown. All part of the subtle disguise: a female form— not typical for Aziraphale the other angels had almost always seen him in his male form, not that he would actually make an effort in their presence or anything—brown eyes, brown hair, subtly different shape to his face and clothing Aziraphale would never willingly wear: too modern and too tight with garnish gold jewellery. Crowley miracled up a hair tie, ‘I forgot how annoying you find long hair. Shoulda braided this for you right away.’

‘I forgot too,’ Aziraphale sighed, ‘I look ridiculous.’

‘You don’t.’

‘I feel ridiculous.’

‘You look like someone else and that’s the point, angel.’

‘I know,’ Aziraphale said wringing his hands, ‘I’m just nervous.’

‘I know,’ Crowley said, ‘try not to do that. The hand thing.’

Aziraphale stilled his hands, holding them uncomfortably by his side. The demons working in the accounting department shouldn’t be anyone who had ever met Aziraphale, but if he did come across someone who knew him, well, they might see through the disguise. He was taking a risk. And he knew it.

‘I’ll be with you the whole time. If it all turns to shit, I’ll be there.’

Aziraphale nodded, chewing his lip.

‘I love you,’ Crowley kissed Aziraphale softly.

‘I love you too, my dear.’

‘Right. Showtime,’ Crowley took off his UD and put it on Aziraphale’s wrist. He used it to call an antique iPhone, his own old phone in fact. ‘See ya angel,’ he said, touching the UD and jumping into the call—all that space between elections— rushing into the mobile phone. Aziraphale kept the call open, carefully placing the mobile phone into his pocket, miracling it bigger on the inside so it could fit comfortably. Crowley would be able to hear everything and to re-emerge at any moment if needed. But for now he was well hidden and safe, just as Aziraphale wanted him to be.

Aziraphale took a deep steadying breath, ‘Showtime,’ he repeated. He rolled his shoulders back and stepped out of the side street, marching the several busy blocks right up to the building that served as the offical London entrance to Heaven and Hell. He walked in without dawdling, no matter how much sentiment tempted him to slow down and gawk. In some senses he was most at risk here, where he could be spotted by someone who recognised him. He strode in, walking around the joint entrances, Heaven’s entrance leading to floors above and Hell’s to floors below. Beyond the entrances to Heaven and Hell at the front, there was a large open room, neutral ground, with Heaven’s Soul Accounting department on the right, and and Hell’s Soul Accounting department on the left. It was the only area in which communication between Heaven and Hell was allowed, the correct allocation of human souls being too vital to the Great Plan to ignore.

Aziraphale marched straight to the left, avoiding even looking at Heaven’s Accounting department.

A demon— young and female in appearance with garnish pink nail polish on her long talon-like nails—was sitting at the reception desk picking at those very nails.

‘Hello,’ Aziraphale smiled.

The demon looked up and sniffed menacingly, like she was considering Aziraphale as a meal.

‘I need to check the allocation of a human soul.’

The demon wrinkled her nose and sighed loudly. ‘You from accounts?’ she said in a nasal whine. Her mouth was filled with rows of sharpened teeth, like a shark.

‘No…um…no, I’m afraid not,’ Aziraphale smiled, his hands clasped together automatically but he remembered and quickly unclasped them, leaving them hanging by his side, ‘I was her allocated angel, however, her guardian angel. I’m invoking my right to check her status.’

The demon sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes, ‘whatever. Name? Death?’

‘Anastasia Ruth Jones. Died on the 16th of October 2041,’ Aziraphale said, supplying the name and death date of the test case given to him by Arthur, decided by democratic vote. Arthur had assured Aziraphale that she was the perfect test case.

The demon sighed again as she punched the details into her computer. She rolled her eyes, ‘takes ages.’

Aziraphale nodded politely. The demon went back to picking at her nails. Every so often she’d sniff loudly. Aziraphale tried very hard not to start wringing his hands. He clasped them behind his back, a technique he’d learned over the years from his meetings with Gabriel.

Several minutes later the demon looked up and sighed, ‘incorrectly assigned,’ she punched at the keyboard again, ‘she’s down for release. Should appear in Heaven in a day or two. Check there to be sure.’ She went back to looking at her nails with an expression of utter boredom.

‘Right. Right,’ Aziraphale swallowed hard, ‘I’m invoking my right to an audit,’ he announced his voice a little shakey.

‘You’re what?’ the demon said with a pained groan, ‘on my shift?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. When a soul has been confirmed as incorrectly assigned we have the right to request a full audit,’ Aziraphale said, finding confidence in the rules.

The demon sighed, smashing her head on the desk repeatedly in frustration. She looked up and groaned, ‘You’re a real bastard, you know that?’

Aziraphale shuffled nervously, ‘I have been told that, yes.’

The demon punched out some more keys, ‘there. It’s happening. This really will take ages.’ She returned to picking at her nails. Aziraphale waited and waited and waited. Time spun by. The demon took out a nail file and filed her talon-like nails to sharp points. She sniffed loudly, looking at the results. Then she removed the garish nail polish and painted them in another equally garish shade of purple. Aziraphale waited and waited. On Earth a day must have passed. Still he waited. Eventually, the demon looked up to the computer screen.

She sighed, ‘it’s done, it’s…’ in an instant the bored look on her face fractured and was replaced by panic, ‘this can’t be right. Over two hundred thousand souls incorrectly assigned…’ she looked back up at Aziraphale, pointing an accusatory finger, ‘you utter bastard. I’m not taking the blame for this. This is way above my pay grade,’ she pressed a button on her desk and glared at Aziraphale furiously.

Eventually, a door opened up in the wall behind her and another demon—this one looked male and had a large open sore on his left cheek— stepped out, ‘what is it?’ he whined.

‘This bastard requested an audit,’ the first demon said, pointing at Azraiphale again, ‘Over two hundred thousand souls incorrectly assigned, Gerald. There’s _never_ been that many incorrect assignments ever before. There’s never been _half_ that many in the entire history of the Earth. You have to contact Lord Beelzebub.’

Aziraphale’s stomach dropped, ‘oh surely there’s no need for that.’ He could feel the phone shiver in his pocket. Crowley was readying himself to leap out. He patted the pocket carefully. Hold on for now, dear. Hold on for now.

Gerald frowned at the screen, taking in the incredible figures.

‘I’m not dealing with this, Gerald. We have to contact Lord Beelzebub…or the Dark Council. Should we go to the Dark Council?’

‘No,’ Gerald growled, literally growled, showing sharp yellow wolf like teeth, ‘do not contact anyone higher up. We aren’t meant to do that about this stuff anymore! Don’t you listen in staff meetings?’

‘What do we do then?’ the receptionist demon snarled back.

‘Release them! It’s part of the New Alliance. It is obviously all part of the New Alliance. There’s one thing I’m sure of, we definitely are not to bother Lord Beelzebub or the Dark Council with this stuff anymore. We are meant to cooperate. So just, you know, _cooperate_. Hand them over.’

‘There now,’ Aziraphale smiled nervously, his hands automatically gesturing openly, ‘all part of the New Alliance…’

Gerald looked to Aziraphale for the first time. Gerald’s eyes flashed with malice and shivered and swallowed hard, as if pushing down years of learned aggression, carefully turning his twisted grimace into a smile. With his yellow wolf-like teeth, the smile wasn’t any less terrifying. ‘Apologies. She’s a moron. We are assigning the souls for release now.’ He punched a few buttons, ‘There all done. No need for anyone to complain, is there? They’ll be released over the next couple of days. They’ll be automatically propelled back to Death and re-assigned to Heaven. Will show on your accounts then.’

Aziraphale smiled and gave a little nod, ‘thank-you very much. Excellent service.’

Gerald snorted and forced his face into another grin, ‘yes, yes. All cooperative, see? No need for anyone to complain. We know how the New Alliance works here.’

Aziraphale backed away carefully and then strode as quickly as possible—resisting the urge to run—out of the building. He continued, striding quickly down the road, putting block after block between himself and the London entrance. Eventually his heart began to slow, his breathing began to steady. He became aware that the phone in his pocket was vibrating steadily. Crowley, wanting to re-emerge, was checking it was safe for them both for him to do so. Aziraphale ducked into a side-street, out of the way of prying eyes. He miracled up some extra privacy and took the phone out of his pocket, ‘you can come out now.’

The phone shook and Crowley re-emerged. He immediately took hold of Azraiphale’s face and kissed him hard, ‘you did it.’

Aziraphale laughed, a note of hysteria creeping in.

Crowley put a finger to his temple in concentration, ‘No one followed. No one’s looking,’ he sighed, ‘you really did it,’ his fingers trailed down the side of Aziraphale’s face, ‘over two hundred thousand saved from Hell because of you. You were right. They had to be saved. ‘m sorry. My clever angel.’

Aziraphale fell into Crowley’s arms and Crowley held him tight, planting little kisses on his forehead.

‘Lets get you home,’ Crowley whispered, arm around Aziraphale. He led him to the Bentley and helped him into the passenger seat. Aziraphale fell in with a sigh. Now that the adrenaline was fading he felt weak and wobbly on his feet. Crowley slipped into the driver’s seat and pulled out into the traffic.

Aziraphale clicked his fingers and his disguise fell away: his hair and eyes returned to their usual colour, the subtle changes to his face disappeared, his face sprung back to its usual shape and his clothes changed to clothes that were more him: a cream coloured old fashioned suit. Only one difference remained, a difference that wasn’t a disguise as such but an alternative form. It wasn’t that Aziraphale preferred a male body over a female one. His true form was sexless and he had no preferences regarding the sexed appearance of his body, nor indeed, over the particular sex organs that he could manifest when he chose to do so. But he was a creature of habit who returned to the familiar unless there was a reason not to. It just so happened that the male form was the first he’d taken. The more he returned to the familiar the more familiar it became. He returned to male in his general appearance as his default, even when not making any particular effort, in the same way a human might change back into their comfy pants as soon as they arrive home. Aziraphale went to click his fingers again, to change back to his usual male-appearing body, but Crowley’s hand reached out and stopped him.

Aziraphale looked to Crowley questioningly.

‘Just for tonight?’ Crowley whispered hoarsely, his ears turning pink.

Aziraphale smiled warmly, ‘of course, dear. I suppose it has been awhile, hasn’t it? Well, since I’ve gone the whole shebang particularly.’

Crowley’s face twisted in distaste. Still grimacing, he said with a mocking tone, ‘Don’t ever call it the whole shebang again.’

Aziraphale flushed slightly, ‘Oh, Good Lord, Crowley! I didn’t mean it like _that_.’

Crowley snorted and chuckled to himself.

‘I might just um…’ Aziraphale clicked his fingers and his long hair disappeared, replaced by a classic pixie-cut, ‘ah. That’s better.’

Crowley’s eyes flicked back to Aziraphale and he smiled warmly, ‘suits you.’

As the Bentley roared through the streets of London, and then past the city limits, towards South Downs, Aziraphale began to process everything that had happened. His hands began to wring in his lap. ‘What do you think about this New Alliance business?’

Crowley sighed, his eyes darting to Aziraphale and back to the road, ‘Worked in our favour today.’

‘But, ultimately?’ Aziraphale asked, his voice tense with worry, ‘It’s not good is it?’

Crowley zoomed around a bend. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. As the road straightened out he turned to Aziraphale, ‘we’ll figure something out.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Sixteen days until The Big One**

**A cottage, Tadfield**

Adam wrote the final scene of the chapter, his hands moving smoothly over the physical keyboard he kept set up on his desk, his eyes running across the text on his foldable screen. Adam had a desk set up in his study with a physical keyboard and a mount for his foldable screen. The fact that he had such a set up wasn’t too eccentric—not for a writer—but the fact that his UD was not around his wrist, the fact that it was sitting in it’s usual place _on the desk_ , well, that was unusual. Adam mouthed the words to himself as he went through the scene again. He tweaked a few words and then nodded to himself, satisfied with the chapter. He stretched and yawned. His ability to write, to think well, was unravelling. Time to finish for the day.

Adam automatically went to switch his UD off but then he remembered catching up with Pepper. He recalled promising, after a few drinks, to check his UD for messages everyday. Grumbling to himself, he checked. Sure enough there was one from Pepper. Of course she’d test him. Of course she would.

It was a link to a video. ‘Relevant to your interests,’ according to Pepper. Adam clicked the link. It was an amusing video. In it two ‘scientists’—both refusing to show their faces or say they names but clearly from the voices a male and a female—filmed interactions with an invisible ‘ghost’ who spoke and moved objects across a table. The ‘scientists’ discussed everything they were doing, setting up each ‘experiment’ and precisely measuring all kinds of things, measurements that they read out in careful serious voices and broad Australian accents. No, wait. Not Australian at all. New Zealander. It was very well done. Adam wondered how they were achieving it. Magnets, maybe? It didn’t look like CGI. Well, they probably were scientists, after all. Adam wondered how many people would be taken in. He scrolled down to the comments. Ha! Plenty by the looks. Adam typed up a quick reply to Pepper, ‘Very amusing. I pass the test?’

Adam flicked his UD off. Time for a walk.

‘Dog! Dog!’

Dog came running, his toenails clicking on the floorboards. As they walked through Hogback wood Adam pondered the ghost video and the afterlife. Adam had never written a book with a ghost character before. Could be fun.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was sent a second copy of the second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter. And she has an idea for working the prophesies out. 
> 
> Aziraphale successfully tested if the metaphysical changes to the universe back-date (they did) and saved over 200,000 souls from Hell.
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. They don't yet have the answer and time is running out.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Fourteen days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Morgan carefully unfolded her foldable screen on the kitchen table, sitting it against the little stand that she (and pretty much everyone else) owned for just that purpose. She flicked her fingers across the screen several times with a little frown on her face. One last flick and the screen displayed the website that she’d painstakingly created. Her mum and dad leaned in—Newton with a cup of tea in his hand— eyes squinting as they looked at their daughter’s work carefully.

‘Every prophesy is here,’ Morgan explained, gesturing to the screen, ‘it is like a digital version of your cataloguing system, mum. I mean, I’ve kept the basic cataloging system. Except, by putting it on this website, we are also opening it up to the world. You can read through the prophesies in order or search for topics,’ Morgan touched the screen as she continued, showing each feature, ‘anyone can comment on a prophesy. See you just click here? When you comment, you can cross-reference between different prophesies, pointing out the links. You can also add links to other websites, like news stories or I don’t know, sites with historical information. Once a comment is up, you can also comment on that. So we’ll end up with whole threads. And, the best bit is comments can be up-voted or down-voted. Which, relying on the power of the crowd, should mean that some of the most useful comments will rise to the top.’

Morgan grinned with pride at her creation.

‘Right,’ Anathema said with a little smile, pushing her glasses back up from where they were slipping down her nose, ‘And we add those insights to what we’ve already figured out and go from there, honey?’

Morgan nodded, ‘yeah, pretty much. I mean this won’t figure out the prophesies for us or anything. It’ll just give us a starting point: a whole lot of patterns and ideas. We’ll still need to make sense of it all.’

Anathema nodded, ‘yeah, I can see that. Given we haven’t got the copious notes of our ancestors on this book it is an ingenious idea and an important head start to have,’ she turned to Morgan and smiled warmly, ‘I’m proud of you. You’re doing this your way.’

Morgan grinned and looked away, a pink blush dusting her cheeks.

‘And people will take the time to comment, sweetpea?’ Newt asked, taking a quick sip of his tea, ‘to vote on it and everything?’

‘Yeah, Dad, of course they will,’ Morgan grinned, ‘People love this kind of stuff. And who isn’t interested in a good prophesy? Especially when people start making the connections,’ Morgan said with a laugh, ‘we just need to get this out there and that’s the easy bit. Look, I’ve already created social media accounts for the website and posted an initial post with a link. All it needs is a little bit of…’ Morgan closed her eyes, tuning into the aura of the technology around her, watching it, listening to it, until she could feel every vibration of the web. She raised her right hand and wiggled her fingers ever so slightly. She smiled satisfied as she felt it click into place, ‘there.’

All across the globe a little post by an as yet unknown website about solving an ancient prophesy rose to the top position on everyone’s social media feed and persistently stayed there.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Fourteen days until The Big One**

**A bar near St James Park, London**

Ethan gestured wildly as he got to the end of his epic dog-washing disaster story. It was a story he’d perfected through several retells with friends and family and he’d gotten it just right. Lil gasped for air in between laughs, especially as Ethan regaled her with the bit about the Labrador.

Ethan smiled, satisfied by the response his story had gotten. He’d only exaggerated the details a little. He took a swig of his beer and thought about how beautiful Lil was when she was happy like this.

‘How did you get into the whole dog washing thing anyway?’ Lil said as her laughter calmed. She immediately took a sip of her beer and looked down at the golden liquid in her glass, adding, ‘wow this is different.’

‘What, the beer?’ Ethan said, eyes lighting up in curiosity.

‘Yeah,’ Lil took another sip, her forehead creasing in concentration as she swirled it around in her mouth, ‘I like it. It is different to wine, huh? I think it’s my favourite alcohol. It tastes sorta… I don’t even know how to describe it.’

Ethan snorted, ‘Yeast. You are tasting yeast.’

‘What’s yeast?’ Lil asked with a little frown.

‘A bacteria.’

Lil choked on her next sip, coughing and spluttering, ‘a what?! That kills people, doesn’t it?’

Ethan laughed heartily at Lil’s reaction. ‘It’s alright. It’s safe. It’s in bread and cakes and stuff too. Makes it rise? And there’s good bacteria in other foods. Like yogurt.’

‘Right. Course there is. I knew that,’ Lil said her voice shaky with shock. She went back to drinking her beer, her enthusiasm for the new taste only slightly dulled.

Ethan smiled fondly. Lil was endlessly fascinating, a bizarre mix of genius-level brilliance and child-like naivity. Ethan found it strangely compelling. But he was intelligent and insightful. He knew enough about the world to know that there was a complicated backstory to Lil. And so, he fretted about her wellbeing, even as he found himself hopelessly drawn in.

Ethan cleared his throat and returned to Lil’s question, ‘I got into the dog washing business because it is easy and simple and I like dogs. I was planning on going into bioinformatics eventually,’ Ethan shrugged, ‘you know, once I’d properly built my skills up. But once I did I figured, really, why bother? Better off just doing the occasional bit of freelance work there. My life is comfortable enough and this means I have plenty of time for other things.’

‘Other things?’ Lil asked.

‘Travel. Art. I do a lot of drawing and digital art.’

‘Oh?’ Lil grinned, ‘I didn’t know that. I’d love to see.’

‘Yeah?’ Ethan said shyly, ‘we can do that sometime. But enough about me. I’m boring, really. I want to know more about you. How did you get into the dog washing business?’

Lil shrugged, ‘Evie and I needed money to survive our forty days here. We applied for everything and took the first jobs we could get. The first one I got was the dog-washing job and that was that.’

Ethan’s head tilted to the side a bit as he considered this. Lil’s backstory was not far away. He could sense it. He wanted to know more—so he could help—but he didn’t want to suddenly open up a whole box of past pain either. He took another sip of his beer, ‘Right. So, what happens after forty days?’

Lil’s eyes widened. What happens after forty days? Death probably. Or eternal torture. Well, both, really. That’s generally how it works, isn’t it? Lil’s gaze flicked down to her glass. She bit her lip and drew little patterns on the condensation.

Ethan let her take her time. He didn’t hurry her. He sat still and silent, waiting. Eventually, when he judged that the time was right, he gave her a little nudge, ‘Is that when you go back? Return to your normal life, whatever that is?’

Lil shook her head, chewing her bottom lip, ‘No. There’s no returning. But I’ll have things to do and if I fail…’ Lil swallowed, ‘it’s a mission.’

‘A mission?’

Lil nodded again. Her hand began to shake as it drew patterns on her glass.

Ethan took this all in carefully, reaching a few tentative conclusions, but deliberately choosing neutral language in his response, ‘the people you used to live with, they’ll be giving you this mission, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘They raised you, someplace very different to this, they sent you here for forty days and then they are going to give you a mission, some kind of test?’ Ethan said, speaking in soft tones.

Lil nodded.

‘That what you want?’ Ethan said, focussed completely on watching Lil’s reaction to his question.

Lil sighed, tears prickling at the corner of her eyes, ‘I’m not sure that matters.’

‘It _definitely_ matters,’ Ethan reached out across the table and put his own hand over hers, stilling the movements on her glass, ‘I don’t fully understand what’s happening for you, Lil. But I’ll help you however I can. If you want to, I don’t know, escape? I don’t even know if that makes sense. But, do what you want, that’s what I’m saying. I want to help you to do what _you_ want, whatever that is.’

Lil looked up from her glass, her dark eyes meeting Ethan’s blue ones. Ethan’s eyes shone with sincerity and determination. Lil realised she’d never seen anything quite so beautiful.

‘I like you, Lil,’ Ethan said, blushing, ‘I really do. But even if you don’t like me, I’ll still help you. I just. I just. I wanted to put all that out there.’

Lil smiled, her face lighting up, her dark eyes shining with the sudden promise of happiness, ‘I like you too.’

‘You do?’ Ethan said, his face breaking into a grin.

Lil nodded shyly. She looked back down at her beer. She realised that she’d been drawing ancient sigils on the glass. Symbols that no human would understand. Just her and Evie. But then, they weren’t completely human, were they?

Ethan sighed and squeezed Lil’s hand and Lil’s attention was drawn instead to the feeling of Ethan’s hand around her own, the delicious and steadying warm of it.

‘How can I help?’ Ethan whispered, ‘tell me.’

Lil chewed at her lip, thinking it through, finding her courage. She looked up and met his gaze, ‘I want to try fornication.’

Ethan choked his blue eyes instantly wide and shocked, ‘you… you… want to…to…’

Lil quickly looked away, her cheeks warming, ‘Oh. That wasn’t what you meant, was it? When you said you liked me?’

‘No. I um…’ Ethan swallowed hard, ‘yeah um… I do like you that way it’s just, well, rather fast and I’ve never,’ he laughed nervously running a hand through his hair, messing it up, ‘I was hoping for maybe a little kiss. Like a chaste kiss. I’d have been absolutely thrilled with a chaste kiss.’

‘Oh,’ Lil met his gaze again. She chewed at her lip, ‘it’s just I don’t have time.’

‘Forty days?’

Lil nodded.

Ethan bit his lower lip, his blue eyes drilling down into Lil’s, desperately trying to figure her out. He took a swig of beer and swallowed hard, ‘Alright. Your place or mine?’

Lil’s eyes widened, ‘yours I think.’

Ethan nodded, ‘right. And, Lil?’

‘Hm?’

‘I still want to help you,’ Ethan said softly, ‘ _Please_ let me help you.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Fourteen days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

‘Oh, Crowley, did you feel that? They’re arriving!’ Aziraphale slipped a bookmark into his book and put it on the bedside table next to him.

Crowley made a little noise that may have been a reply or may have simply been a noise that he happened to make in his sleep. He snuggled his head further into Aziraphale’s lap, a lap that he was currently using as a pillow. It was one of their most common night time positions, Aziraphale sitting up in bed reading, and Crowley lying across the bed using Aziraphale’s lap as a pillow.

Aziraphale peaked through the window, tuning in to his ethereal sight. Sure enough, the number of new spirits arriving was increasing exponentially. The Garden of the Faithful Good, as Aziraphale had taken to calling it, was about to receive an enormous influx of new members. Aziraphale grinned, delighted. The new members would soon dramatically outnumber the current residents. And they weren’t just new members, Aziraphale suddenly realised, but people from different historical periods, people who’d died at various points in the past six thousand years, people who’d spent time being tortured in Hell. Aziraphale’s stomach twisted with anxiety as he suddenly realised that their triumph was bringing a real challenge to the newly developing community in their garden.

‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale tapped rapidly on Crowley’s shoulder, ‘Crowley! Wake up, dear.’

Crowley’s eyes blinked open. He yawned, ‘Ziraphale?’

Aziraphale’s heart filled with warm affection, ‘Dear, the new souls are arriving. The population of our garden is going to increase exponentially. Many more souls are about to arrive than are here already. Crowley, I’ve just realised that the influx will include people from all periods of history, people who’ve spent time in Hell, people who’ve spent _longer_ in Hell than they have on Earth. It may be a bit challenging.’

Crowley yawned and stretched, ‘I know.’

‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Aziraphale said softly, running his hand through Crowley’s hair, letting his fingers catch on the ruby curls.

Crowley shrugged as best he could from his position, head still resting in Aziraphale’s lap, hand falling across his belly, ‘Thought you realised. ‘S obvious, innit?’

Aziraphale sighed and frowned. Of course Crowley would think it was obvious. In some ways Crowley was always two steps ahead. ‘Well, I didn’t think of it,’ Azriraphale replied, ‘I was too focussed on the actual saving. I didn’t even stop to consider what would happen next.’

Crowley snorted, ‘Typical angel.’

Aziraphale’s hands still carded through Crowley’s hair, his fingers slipping around each crimson curl, ‘I think they are going to need our help.’

Crowley yawned again, ‘Hm. They’ll need to sort it out themselves in the end.’

Aziraphale frowned, his hand stilling.

‘S’alright,’ Crowley quickly replied, ‘m not saying we shouldn’t help. Just, they’ll have to figure it out themselves ultimately.’

Aziraphale’s hand continued to stroke Crowley’s hair as he thought this over, ‘Yes, you are probably right,’ he peaked out the window again, chewing his bottom lip.

Crowley's groaned melodramatically as he took Aziraphale’s hint, ‘c’mon then, let’s go help them.’

‘Thank-you, dear,’ Aziraphale smiled softly.

Crowley got out of bed quickly and stretched to cover the way Aziraphale's soft smile melted his heart. Crowley miracled his black pajamas into too tight black clothes and leaned against the doorframe, openly watching Aziraphale strip off. Aziraphale efficiently removed his tartan pajamas and changed into his clothes, his hands deftly moving over the buttons, unconcerned by Crowley’s intent gaze. Crowley stroked his own throat as he leered.

As Aziraphale reached his bow tie, Crowley spoke, ‘Be interesting to see who made the cut.’

‘Hm?’ Aziraphale looked up briefly, his attention quickly returning to perfecting the bow tie.

‘Y’know. Seneca. Aristotle. Montaigne. Satre. Beauvoir. All atheists. Were any of them good enough?’ Crowley drawled, ‘Course, not everyone in the garden is an atheist. There are plenty of agnostics, deists and pantheists. Many just lived their lives guided by something other than faith. Galileo? Einstein? Hypatia? Darwin? Might they show up? Personally, I’m hoping to see DaVinci again. Can’t think of any other reason why he’d have ended up in Hell.’

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale’s eyes lit up, ‘Oh, Good Lord! I didn’t think of that.’

Crowley snorted in amusement, ‘For someone so clever you can be a bit obtuse, angel.’

Aziraphale frowned briefly at the barb but he let it go, quickly returning to his delighted smile as a possibility occurred to him, ‘oh you don’t think, perhaps, Oscar Wilde might be?’

Crowley quickly shook his head, frown knotting on his forehead, ‘I don’t think so, angel. Wasn’t exactly the paragon of virtue, was he? I don’t think lack of faith was the only deciding factor in his case.’

‘Oh. I suppose not,’ Aziraphale said a bit disappointed. He sighed, ‘He did have a good heart and his books have brought so much joy to so many. So, perhaps?’

Crowley snorted, ‘oh angel, one of these days you’ll figure out the difference between virtue and charm. Don’t figure it out too quickly though,’ he threw his hands across his chest dramatically, ‘You’ll leave me heartbroken.’

Aziraphale laughed. He gave his bow tie a final twiddle, ‘don’t be ridiculous, dear. You’re not charming.’

Crowley laughed loudly at that. How very ridiculous.

‘Liar,’ Crowley said with a seductive grin, ‘I’m wily and beguiling. You’ve said so yourself many, many times, for thousands of years.’

‘Alright, you are quite charming I must admit,’ Aziraphale said with a blush, ‘but I think we’ve long since established you are, deep down, quite virtuous too.’

Crowley made an incomprehensible noise, a strange mixture of humming agreement and spluttering objection.

Aziraphale marched past him, ‘Coming, dear?’

Crowley quickly followed and they approached the larger glass doors that opened out from their living room to their garden. Crowley clicked his fingers and they instantly opened. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, slipping them on. Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand and they stepped out into the garden together.

‘Aziraphale! Crowley!’ Arthur Sinclair called out as he floated quickly to their side, ‘Glad you could make it. The first influx of the historical refugees has arrived. That’s what we’ve decided to call them: historical refugees.’

‘Oh so _you_ realised they’d be people who’d lived in a variety of historical time periods then?’ Crowley said amused, his eyes darting to Aziraphale behind his sunglasses, eyebrows slightly raised.

Arthur frowned in confusion, if a floating spirit can be said to frown, ‘naturally. It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

Crowley smirked as Aziraphale tutted and brushed down his jacket, carefully not meeting Crowley’s eye.

‘It’ll be a difficult transition for us as a community,’ Arthur said, ‘we’ve identified two key threats: the first is that many of the historical refugees will have had no previous experience with democracy. As our community is democratic, and the historical refugees will outnumber us 100 to 1 you’ll appreciate that this is an existential threat. They could, through democratic means, unravel the very foundations of our community,’ Arthurn floated about in a worried sort of way before continuing, ‘The second is we expect that the historical refugees will have experienced significant trauma in Hell. They’ll need time and space to heal. I just hope we can support them to do so.’

‘Oh,’ Crowley said, eyes wide behind his sunglasses, ‘didn’t think of the democracy thing.’

Aziraphale gave him a satisfied grin and a little pat on the shoulder, ‘it’s alright, dear. You can’t be expected to think of everything.’

Crowley snorted.

‘Quite a tricky one,’ Arthur said, ‘we’ve suspended all decision making while we process and support the historical refugees. Once they’ve all arrived, and been accounted for, we will explain how we’ve chosen to govern ourselves and why. Then, we’ll put it to the vote: do we carry on with our current system or reform it in some way,’ Arthur sighed deeply, ‘I do hope we are doing the right thing. Still, a nice well-reasoned argument is bound to work wonders, isn’t it?’

Crowley nodded slowly, biting down on his lower lip to stop himself blurting out all the many, many times he’d seen a well-reasoned argument fail dramatically, ‘Ngh.’

‘Well,’ Aziraphale jumped in with a beaming smile and an aura of forced positivity, ‘it seems to me a jolly good idea to try. I’m sure it’ll all be fine. Right crowd for it and all.’

‘And we will be focused on healing,’ Arthur said, ‘There are a number of people here with experience in trauma, in supporting refugees, in mental health and other relevant fields. They are coordinating the first response.’

‘Sounds sensible,’ Aziraphale replied.

‘Do you mind if we send them to meet you both? Some might find it comforting to meet an angel and, of course, you have significant experience with Hell, Crowley. Could be very useful.’

‘We’d be happy to help however we can,’ Aziraphale said with a smile, ‘you know, we could help out with some miracles if need be?’

‘Oh? Like what?’ Arthur said floating amongst the lavender.

‘Well, there’s always,’ Aziraphale coughed, his eyes darting to Crowley shyly.

Crowley grimaced and nodded, ‘Go on then. Don’t show off too much.’

Aziraphale straightened, standing at full height. The golden light of a halo flickered ever so slightly above his head. Crowley could see Aziraphale's wings spreading in the ethereal plane. Aziraphale raised his right hand and said in a loud steady voice, ‘Be not afraid!’

At once all fear was sucked out of the garden and what remained was a warm, steady and calming feeling of deep peace, a deep abiding sense of pure serenity.

Arthur sighed. ‘Perfect. Just perfect.’

Aziraphale stretched slightly, flexing his arms. His gaze flicked to Crowley, ‘still got it.’

Crowley laughed, amused.

‘Well, I can’t stay chatting to you two all day,’ Arthur said, ‘I must check on how the first response is going. Thanks very much.’

Aziraphale and Crowley took position on the garden seat, Aziraphale sitting primly and Crowley lounging, arm over the back. They watched the steady flow of human souls as they entered the garden.

‘They do seem to have things well in hand, don’t they?’ Aziraphale said, eyes flicking to Crowley.

‘Hm.’

After a pause, Aziraphale added, ‘You know, I never would have dreamed we’d end up here, that being on our own side could lead to all of this.’

Crowley snorted, ‘course not. Why would we have thought we’d end up with over two hundred thousand souls in our garden? Bloody ridiculous.’

Aziraphale watched the souls arriving, little shooting stars flying across a soft blue sky, every light a life, every light a soul saved from etneral torment.

‘Beautiful, though, isn’t it?’ Azraiphale whispered.

‘Ngh.’


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Aziraphale successfully tested if the metaphysical changes to the universe back-date (they did) and saved over 200,000 souls from Hell. They are currently arriving in their garden.
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. In the meantime, Evie has a date with Mia, a fellow Wellness Facilitator. They are going to a free concert in St James Park. 
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was sent a second copy of the second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter. And she has an idea for working the prophesies out: make a website and use the power of the crowd.
> 
>  **Trigger Warning:** past child abuse mention in the first section with Evie and Lil. It is implied that it was sexual abuse, but this is not clearly stated. No details given. No flashbacks.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twelve days until The Big One**

**Free concert in St James Park, London**

‘Mia!’ Evie called out, both arms waving wildly as she, Lil and Ethan made it to the edge of St James Park.

Mia looked up from where she was patiently waiting for her date, ‘Oh, hey, Evie! You made it,’ she stepped forward, arms out, like she was going to hug Evie but stopped suddenly unsure. Mia clutched at her own arm awkwardly instead.

‘Um,’ Evie said, shifting her weight from side to side equally awkwardly and pointing to Lil and Ethan, ‘this is Lil, my sister, and Ethan.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ Mia beamed, reaching out to shake hands.

Greetings exchanged, Mia looked from Lil to Evie and back again. Then she smiled and asked with genuine welcome, ‘So, you joining us for the concert?’

‘We’ll definitely check out the concert,’ Ethan jumped in, not trusting Evie or Lil to get the answer to this question right, ‘Lil and I will meet up with you later though. If you like. We have something to do first, don’t we, Lil?’

Lil looked to Ethan, a little frown on her face. Ethan winked.

‘Oh. Right. Yeah. Something to do,’ Lil said, ‘See you two later.’

And with that Lil and Ethan walked away hand in hand, leaving Evie and Mia to it.

‘So…’ Mia began.

‘So…’ Evie repeated.

‘You’re a twin then?’ Mia blurted out.

Evie nodded.

Mia sighed. She ran her hand through her pixie cut, messing it up but in a way that only made her look more attractive in Evie’s opinion. ‘Sorry,’ Mia said, ‘that was a stupid thing to say. Course you’re a twin. I literally just met your twin. Bit nervous.’

‘You’re nervous?’ Evie whispered coyly, her face heating.

‘Oh. Shut up,’ Mia replied shaking her head and giggling.

A wild grin took over Evie’s face, ‘C’mon let’s check out this concert.’

They wandered into the park together, Mia happily explaining which musicians were playing and what kinds of music they played. She quickly discovered that Evie really didn’t know anything about music so it turned into quite an in-depth conversation covering the history of different musical styles and types of instruments.

Mia and Evie found a spot at the open concert towards the back of the audience where they could sit on the grass. They started out just listening and watching. But when a favourite band of Mia’s came on, Mia got up and danced. Evie watched, utterly enchanted at the way Mia could undulate her body in such captivating and poetic ways. It was nothing like the dancing of demons in Hell. This was… beautiful. It was a glorious expression of Mia’s God-given body and Evie could not understand why the angels were forbidden from doing it.

A few songs in and Mia became quite persistent in her requests for Evie to join her. And so Evie stood and tried as best she could. Mia smiled back, delighted, as if Evie too was beautiful. Mia patiently taught Evie a move or two and Evie giggled as she tried to replicate them. Evie knew her dancing was terrible but she was already—a quick lesson from Mia under her belt—better than any demon she knew. So that was something. And Mia seemed absolutely delighted to teach her. Evie didn’t mind being a terrible dancer if Mia was happy to teach her, if Mia would tenderly place her hands on Evie’s hips to help her get the movement right and sweetly whisper instructions in her ear.

After a good dance, they both needed a break and some nourishment so they moved away from the music and bought some food from one of the many pop-up food stands. They found a nice grassy spot under a tree, close enough to the concert to still hear the music, but far enough away to be able to talk. Mia unwrapped her kebab and ate it carefully, while Evie devoured her chips.

Mia smiled, ‘I’ve never seen that much enthusiasm for chips before. Not even from kids.’

Evie shrugged, ‘I love them. Chips was the first food I ever ate.’

Mia laughed. ‘The first food you ever ate?’ She repeated, ‘You must have had an interesting mother.’

Evie thought back to her childhood, raised by angels and demons far from Earth, constantly watched over by the Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelzebub, groomed daily for her future God-given destiny. ‘Ha!’ Evie snorted, ‘You have no idea.’

Mia stilled. She looked at Evie, immediately recognising the pain beneath the joke. She put her kebab down, sitting it back in the recyclable container that it came in, and wiped her mouth carefully on her serviette. She sighed and looked to Evie again. ‘I have some idea,’ she said softly, ‘you still in contact with them, your family I mean?’

Evie paused in her eating as the softness off Mia’s reply cut through the defence of her own joke. Evie put her hands down on her lap, so the shaking wouldn’t be visible. She bit her lip as she found the words, ‘Kinda. Yes. Had a bit of a break but…well.’

Mia frowned, her face tightening with concern, ‘you don’t have to go back,’ she said tenderly, ‘Not if they aren’t good to you, Evie. Not if they hurt you,’ she paused and looked away, her eyes finding the clouds dotted across the blue sky, ‘mightn’t make sense in your situation. Maybe I’m projecting. But I haven’t spoken to my parents in two years. Best thing I ever did. Cutting that tie.’

Evie looked up, looked immediately towards Mia with wide dark eyes, her own pain fleeing in the desperate need to support Mia with hers, ‘Oh, Mia. I’m sorry. Did they hurt you?’

Mia nodded slowly, swallowing thickly, ‘Everyone thinks dad’s some brilliant, amazing, virtuous man. An upstanding citizen,’ she laughed bitterly, shaking her head, ‘if they knew the truth. If they knew what he…and mum, well, mum believes _him_. Not me, _him_. Or she says she does anyway. So that’s that. Fuck ‘em.’

Evie took Mia’s hand in hers and squeezed it tightly. They sat silently, sunlight warming them for a full minute before Evie whispered hoarsely, ‘why do people do horrible things?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mia answered with a laugh, ‘I don’t know…But someone should stop them,’ her voice started shaking with emotion, ‘some things just aren’t right and someone should stop them.’

Evie nodded, holding on to Mia’s hand tightly. Yes, she thought. Someone should. Someone should stop them. Otherwise people like Mia get hurt. And it isn’t right. Someone should reign in the darker side of humanity. And maybe, just maybe, that someone is me.

Mia squeezed her hand back, ‘I’m okay. He’s gone from my life now. He can’t hurt me anymore. Are _you_ going to be okay?’

Tears welled in Evie’s eyes as her own pain flooded back. ‘I hope so,’ she looked down at the green grass under them and swallowed hard, ‘There are…there are things I need to do.’

‘Things _you_ need to do or things your family are making you do?’ Mia said softly.

Evie shrugged. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment. That was the question wasn’t it? Was she going to do what Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub wanted? Or was she going to find her true mission and embrace that? Was she going to find what the Almighty herself wanted? And if the Almighty didn’t answer her, then what? When she opened her eyes they glinted with a fiery determination, ‘I’m going to do what I think is right.’

Mia smiled, her face lighting up, ‘good for you. Well, you’ve got my support. Whatever you need. I mean it.’

‘I’m going to do what I think is right,’ Evie repeated, biting her lower lip and looking at Mia’s mouth, ‘starting with this.’ Evie leant forward and kissed Mia softly. When Evie leant back to check if her actions were well received Mia reached out and pulled her back in for more.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twelve days until The Big One**

**The Garden of the Faithless Good**

Crowley and Aziraphale kept up a near constant vigil as the historical refugees flooded into the garden, falling to the ground like stars falling from the sky. They provided whatever assistance they could, whether that be comfort or assisting with the orientation. In amongst it all, they enjoyed the opportunity to remake a few old acquaintances. The arrival of DaVinci, in particular, was marked with fits of elation from Crowley.

As the historical refugees settled in and told their stories it soon became clear that concerns over the lasting effects of the trauma of Hell were unfounded. None of the souls had any memory of their time in Hell. Not just no memory of it, they showed no signs of trauma. For each it was as if they had died yesterday. In many ways, the historical refugees had no more of an adjustment to make than anyone else arriving in the garden for every new soul had to quickly adjust to an afterlife and a metaphysics that wasn’t quite as they’d expected. And so the focus shifted from one of trauma and care, to the need to rapidly form a community that extended beyond not just geographical cultural differences but also _historical_ cultural differences.

‘Why don’t they remember Hell?’ Aziraphale whispered to Crowley in an opportune moment.

Crowley shrugged, ‘perhaps Death wiped that experience away. Or maybe it is simply built into the metaphysics of the universe. They were never meant to be there and so they weren’t.’

Aziraphale frowned, biting his bottom lip as he considered it, ‘perhaps. I suppose it happens when a soul shifts from Hell to Heaven too. I just never had the experience with that side of Heaven to know. It is a good thing at any rate.’

Crowley snorted, ‘forgetting Hell? You don’t need to tell me that.’

Aziraphale turned to Crowley, his eyes welling with tears, ‘Oh, my dear.’

‘Shuddup, angel,’ Crowley waved his sympathy away with a frown, ‘Forgetting Heaven‘d be a good thing too in my opinion so don’t get too mushy.’

‘Well, that’s the last of them,’ Arthur Sinclair said as he floated over to Aziraphale and Crowley, ‘there’re all here. And I understand you two have met some old friends?’

‘Hm,’ Crowley said, ‘it was particularly nice to see Leonardo again. He was a bit surprised to discover that I’m a demon and Aziraphale is an angel but...’ Crowley shrugged and grinned fondly, ‘he’ll adjust quicker than most.’

Arthur nodded, ‘Oh yes. Wonderful to have him here, of course. That’s one thing we didn’t anticipate, however, the fact that we’d all be a bit star struck. DaVinci. Hypatia. Einstein. It is a little overwhelming.’

Aziraphale smiled sympathetically, ‘just try to remember, they are all people. They are brilliant yes, but they aren’t the stories you’ve heard about them. They lived and breathed like everyone else.’

Arthur laughed, ‘you know Montaigne said something similar? Though he put it a little more colourfully. Something like: in life we all shat.’

Crowley snorted with laughter as Azraiphale paled.

Aziraphale cleared his throat, ‘While I don’t approve of the language that’s true enough I suppose.’

Arthur looked back into the garden, watching the other spirits for some signal. He nodded as if he’d seen what he was looking for, ‘Well, I think they’ve nearly completed the orientations. I should go and coordinate our first meeting. Wish me luck.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Aziraphale smiled.

As Arthur floated away Aziraphale and Crowley walked back to their cottage, Aziraphale chewing nervously at his lip. When the door shut behind them Aziraphale turned to Crowley, ‘do you think they’ll be alright? Arthur did seem terribly worried about the democracy thing…’

Crowley shrugged, ‘Can you blame him? Why wouldn’t you worry about your community turning into a ruthless dictatorship?’

Aziraphale wrung his hands, ‘Perhaps we should…um…’

‘Nothing we can do, angel. Sometimes you gotta let people work things out for themselves. That’s the whole point. What _we_ are going to do is this: I’m going to take you out for sushi. Then we are going to sit right there, on that couch and consume a frankly ridiculous amount of wine. Arthur will let us know when they’ve had their little meeting.’ 

Aziraphale reluctantly agreed. He did his best to put his worries aside and the sushi did, indeed, provide a welcome distraction. When they arrived back home and settled on the couch Aziraphale’s forehead once again creased in worry. It was hard to be distracted from the goings on of the garden with the ethereal sounds of the spirit’s discussion drifting in. The meeting was still taking place.

Crowley frowned at the door, ‘terrible racket,’ he miracled up a sound barrier, blocking the noise, ‘much better. ‘ll need my sleep tonight it’s been too long.’

‘What if they need us?’

Crowley made a sweeping gesture, ‘na. We’ll still hear if they knock. I can’t listen to the jabbering all night.’

Aziraphale nodded in agreement as Crowley opened a bottle of red and poured two glasses. They were just starting to get properly sloshed when a tapping noise interrupted Crowley mid-rant.

Crowley frowned at the door, for a moment not understanding why he’d been so rudely interrupted in his detailed explanation of why Hell as depicted in the show The Good Place was fair superior and more imaginative than the real Hell could ever be, ‘Oh, Arthur.’

Crowley slipped his sunglasses back on and opened the door.

Sure enough, Arthur was floating outside, ‘Thought you’d like to know we’ve voted to maintain our current system of self-government. A few alternatives have been proposed, but we will be maintaining our current system for at least a year, with a deciding vote then. Overall, there was a lot of support for a democracy—particularly given the nature of the residents of our garden-- most of the debate was over the details. It is quite a relief.’

‘Jolly good!’ Aziraphale beamed, his eyes lighting up with happiness and relief, ‘that’s absolutely tickiboo, isn’t it Crowley dear?’

Crowley nodded, ‘quite. Disaster averted.’

‘Yes. Democracy maintained. No one is traumatised. We can move onto a program of cultural and knowledge exchange,’ Arthur replied. He floated about excitedly, ‘Imagine what we can achieve with the likes of DaVinci and Einstein here!’

‘Ha!’ Crowley laughed loudly.

Arthur looked at him curiously.

‘What?’ Crowley shrugged, ‘I’m imagining it. Aren’t you seeing helicopters that travel faster than light? Kites to surf the edge of black holes? Gonna be wild. ‘m not sure you’re ready for it to be honest, Arthur.’

‘Hm…’ Arthur considered this with some trepidation, ‘well, it is good to have them here anyway. Darwin is taking the realisation that literal creationism is true better than I’d have expected. Better than any of the paleontologists.’

‘Oh that’s good,’ Aziraphale said with a smile.

‘Oh, and you should have seen Douglas Adam’s face when he realised we’d called the fact that we can all understand each other here the Babel Fish Effect!’ Arthur continued as he floated about, ‘He was so touched. Though also deeply embarrassed I suspect to have to explain his books to the likes of Einstein, DaVinci, and Darwin. He seemed quite mortified at that. He’ll be alright. He was chatting to Terry Pratchett last time I saw him.’

Aziraphale frowned at the deep sense of recognition that last name caused, a deep and mysterious pull right in the very centre of his being, ‘Terry Pratchett, you said?’

‘Yes,’ Arthur nodded, ‘you know, the author? Anyway. Thank you again. For saving everyone you could.’

Aziraphale blushed and shook his head, ‘oh dear fellow, it is quite alright.’

Arthur said his goodbyes and floated away back into the garden. Aziraphale watched him go and closed the door with a sigh.

‘Terry Pratchett,’ Aziraphale muttered to himself as the door clicked shut, ‘why does that name feel important to me?’

‘He’s an author, angel,’ Crowley said with a shrug, ‘course he’s familiar to you. The real question is: who’s this Douglas Adams and why does he think there were fish involved in the whole Tower of Babel thing?’ Crowley frowned contemptuously and took a sip of wine, ‘I mean, fish? Really?’

Aziraphale shook his head, a frown creasing his forehead, ‘perhaps, that’s one of the events the humans have got a little muddled with time. They do get it all a bit confused. Though I feel like I should know this Pratchett fellow. He isn’t just familiar, he’s important somehow,’ he paused a moment, thinking, ‘reminds me of you, in fact. Why would that be?’

Crowley shrugged, ‘Presumbly because he’s brilliant and handsome.’

Aziraphle stood, frozen, pondering it, trying to place the name, ‘I want to say Neil. Why’s that?’

‘C’mon,’ Crowley said downing the rest of his wine, ‘m tired. You coming to bed too?’

Aziraphale smiled and shook his head, putting the puzzle of Terry Pratchett out of his mind, ‘perhaps it’ll come to me later. Or I might meet him sometime. He resides in our garden now after all. Yes, I’ll join you. Just let me just select one or two books for the night.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twelve days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Newt walked into the kitchen to find Anathema and Morgan both staring at Morgan’s UD screen unfolded to full size and propped up on the kitchen table. They both wore exactly the same puzzled frown and Newt felt a warm fondness for them as he recognised, yet again, how much Morgan was her mother’s daughter.

Newt quietly stepped behind them and squinted down at the screen. Just as he had thought they were frowning over Morgan’s prophesies website. Or, more accurately, they were frowning over the most popular, the most well-liked comments on the website.

Newt had known for a long time now that his daughter’s mysterious connection to technology was a powerful force. Just as powerful as his own connection to technology, in fact, albeit with very different results. But even he was blown away by the attention she’d managed to gather to the website in such a short period of time. It was, without any degree of exaggeration, the talk of the entire world. With so much attention focused on the website, Morgan’s strategy had worked beautifully. They had rich and detailed commentary from people the world over to give them a head start in understanding what Agnes Nutter was predicting.

Newt pushed his glasses up his nose from where they were slipping down, ‘anything useful?’

‘Oh, hello dear,’ Anathema said, coming out of her concentrated daze and realising Newt was standing right behind them, ‘Well, I think they may be right here about this one,’ Anathema said, pointing to a particular prophesy, ‘It definitely refers to the internet and cob is an old English word for spider, that’s true.’

Morgan nodded and hummed her agreement, ‘yeah I think so too,’ Morgan frowned, ‘oh, cob as in cobweb?’

Anathema nodded, ‘ah-ha.’

Newt squinted, ‘What’s going to happen to the internet exactly?’

Morgan shrugged, ‘Something bad.’

Anathema read out the prophesy for Newt,

‘Spin, spin, spin

Threads of silk holde the worlde together

But silk can also make a nette

And there be a cob.’

Newt frowned, ‘well, that sounds vaguely sinister.’

‘So the internet is going to, what, trap humanity somehow?’ Morgan frowned, clicking her tongue against her teeth as she tried to puzzle it out, ‘how?’

‘Well, I do find that young people today spend an awful lot of time on their UDs,’ Newt said, ‘maybe it just means that.’

Anathema and Morgan looked back to Newt with a simultaneous grimace of disgust before deciding as one to simply ignore that particular comment.

Anathema shook her head, and answered Morgan’s question, ‘we’ll recognise it when it happens. We could always only work out the gist until the prophesy started unfolding.’

‘And sometimes not even that,’ Newt chimed in.

Anathema frowned.

‘What about this one?’ Morgan said clearing her voice to read the prophesy clearly,

‘Ye must die for rebirthe

The mother pays for life in bloode

A pact ancient and of the worlde

Angels and devils cannot ken.’

Anathema chewed her bottom lip as she considered it, ‘what do the comments say?’

‘Well, there’s comments likening it to Christ’s death on the cross,’ Morgan said, ‘dying to be reborn. And then there’s some pointing out the mortal risk of childbirth. And yet others bring up the Mother Goddess religions and paganism. Thoughts?’

Anathema frowned and drummed her fingers on the table, ‘If I had to say, I’d say it was about a revival of paganism. But I could be completely off. Cross-reference it under Christ, birth, and Goddess.’

Morgan tapped at the screen in front of them, ‘Done. What do you make of this one: what was etched in stone will be set in stone?’

‘Etched in stone?’ Anathema repeated, ‘What do the comments say?’

‘Just people pointing out the whole writing on clay tablets thing,’ Morgan said, ‘so something ancient will come back and want be set and certain?’

Anathema frowned, ‘cross-reference it with ancient and stone.’

‘Done.’

‘Oh,’ Newt said leaning over, ‘I don’t like that one,’ he cleared his voice and read,

‘Ye think naught be worse than death, But there be worse, and it is coming,’ Newt coughed, ‘any helpful comments on that one?’

Morgan shook her head, ‘just a lot of people saying “oh shit” and “that’s bad”.’

‘Well, they’re not wrong,’ Newt replied.

‘Cross reference it with death,’ Anathema said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Kings and philosophers shit—and so do ladies' Michel de Montaigne
> 
> I have completed my first draft! So now I'm just focusing on perfecting and editing each chapter immediately before posting. I'll be returning to a (mostly) weekly posting schedule. On occasions, if I hit a chapter that needs a bit more work, I'll take a fortnight to ensure I get it right. Quality before deadlines. 
> 
> Yes, I did squeal when I realised that Terry Pratchett as a good atheist must be one of the souls in the garden.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation. Evie has been examining the data collected by the universal devices, trying to find insights. She has also been praying. 
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was sent a second copy of the second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter. She put it on a website. 
> 
> **Trigger Warning:** forced adoption, birth, murder (all in the final section)

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Ten days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie woke up smiling, dreams of Mia lingering on the edge of her consciousness. Beautiful, wonderous Mia.

Evie stretched and yawned. She slipped out of bed and knelt beginning her morning prayers with gratitude for the time she’d been able to spend with Mia, with thankfulness for Mia’s very existence. Evie could see it for what it was: a great blessing. She started there and then she moved on to asking for answers, to asking for God to show her how to fix the world, how to remake it as she’d originally intended. She asked and asked, but she received no answers. Only silence. Yet, this morning the silence did not ring in her ears in quite the same way as it had been.

Evie ended her prayers and stood up, stretching again. She had an idea. She turned the idea over in her mind as she showered, dressed and prepared for the day. Free will is important, she thought to herself. Core to the Almighty’s plan. But humans make terrible choices. Evie recalled the first insight she’d managed to gather from looking at the UD data: humans do stupid things. They can’t even act in their own best interests. They get confused, lose sight of all of the consequences of their actions. Instead of choosing the action that, overall, results in the best outcome for them, they make a choice that results in the quick and easy pay-off even if the long-term consequences are worse, even if they are far worse. They don’t even seem to fully grasp the patterns in their own behaviour, patterns that Evie easily identified within the UD data. What if humans could make use of all of that data? What if they could make a truly empowered choice, empowered by full knowledge of their past actions, empowered by fully predicting all of the consequences? Surely, that wouldn’t compromise free will, surely it would involve the full realisation of it?

Then Evie recalled her second insight: the universality of _do not kill_. That one simple rule appeared over and over again, across different cultures, in different legal systems. And clearly, unambiguiously, societies with that rule, societies that enforced that rule did better. That showed not just that do not kill came from the Almighty herself, but that humanity chose that rule, even as some humans broke it. They chose it over and over again. They were trying. Surely humanity’s choices as a species should count for something? Why should the choice of the individual override the choices of the group? Humanity just needed—Evie recalled Mia’s hands pressing softly into her hips as Mia taught her to dance—they just needed a hand. It wouldn’t be taking choice away, to give humans a helping hand in keeping to choices that they themselves had made as a species. It would be enhancing their ability to choose.

Then Evie’s train of thought shifted to remembering Mia’s face as Mia had recalled that her father had hurt her. Evie grimanced. How could anyone hurt Mia? Beautiful, perfect, caring Mia. Evie didn’t know what Mia’s father had done, after all, Mia hadn’t said, but whatever it was it must have been terrible. Some things needed to be stopped. Evie could sense that, she could see that with perfect righteous clarity.

Do not kill was universal. Evie considered this carefully. Surely, the other Ten Commandments were too? Maybe it was that simple: stick to the big rules. Sweep away the little ones. The big rules were the same rules that humanity itself came back to again and again. Evie rattled off a few of them in her mind: not stealing, not lying, not commiting adultery. Yes, those rules came up across society after society too. And then there were the rules about worshipping God. Well, surely they simply came from the Almighty herself? That seemed straight forward enough. What harm could come form acknowledging God?

It wouldn’t be taking choice away, not anymore than Mia’s gentle hand stopped Evie from dancing. It would simply be enhancing humanity’s ability to choose well, by supporting and strengthening the big rules that they themselves had endorsed, over and over again, by supporting and strengthening their ability to make good choices by remembering their own history, by properly predicting the long-term consequences of their own actions. The trouble was, humanity had been released into the world, had escaped from the garden, without properly learning how to handle freedom first. It was like Evie’s dancing before Mia had taught her any moves. Without ever being taught how to dance, of course she initially danced like a demon! Without ever being taught how to make good choices, of course humans made a lot of bad ones. Perhaps humanity was meant to spend longer in the garden of Eden. Perhaps God’s plan was for humanity to adjust to freedom slowly and gradually. Instead, Adam and Eve had eaten the apple and grown up all too fast. Humanity just needed a gentle guiding hand that they should have had all along.

Evie finished dressing and wandered, still half in her head, out into the living room. She found Lil sitting on the couch, UD glasses on looking at an augmented reality screen invisible to Evie herself.

‘Hey,’ Lil said with a smile, looking up, ‘sleep well?’

Evie smiled back, ‘I did, yeah.’

Lil sighed and pulled off her UD glasses, throwing them on the coffee table and leaning back into the couch, ‘Not long left now. I dunno, Evie. What are we going to to? God given you the answer yet?’

Evie shook her head, ‘She’s quiet. I don’t think she’s going to just give us the answer.’

Lil sighed, running her hand over her long dark hair, feeling the rough frizzy texture, ‘figures.’

‘But,’ Evie continued, face lighting up, dark eyes flashing, ‘we can do what _we_ think is right.’

Lil nodded, and grinned, ‘What, like, just do things we think will make the world better?’

Evie nodded, ‘Yeah, sure. Why not?’

Lil laughed, ‘sounds good to me. I have a few ideas, actually. Just simple things,’ she deflated a little, frowning, ‘But nothing that is a complete fix. Evie, we still need an actual fix. Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub will destroy us for sure.’

‘I’ve got one,’ Evie said, sitting next to Lil, a big smile on her face, ‘I mean, I’ve got ideas for little stuff too. But I’ve also got a big idea. I think I know how it went wrong. I think I know how to fix it.’

Lil raised a single eyebrow, ‘Oh, yeah? I’m listening.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Ten days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Crowley yawned as he sauntered from the bedroom, past Aziraphale eating his breakfast while reading a book at the table—giving a little half hearted wave as he passed—to collapse groaning on the couch.

‘You did remember to sober up before you fell asleep didn’t you, dear?’ Aziraphale said, an amused grin playing about his lips.

‘Hm,’ Crowley replied, ‘not hungover just tired. Needed more sleep.’

Aziraphale tutted, ‘go back to bed then. It’s still early.’

Crowley grunted and closed his eyes.

Aziraphale shook his head as Crowley dozed on the couch, catching up on just a little more, well, not actual sleep but dozing. Eventually, he gave up and pulled out his foldable screen, scrolling through his social media accounts. He’d been so busy with the historical refugees in their garden that he hadn’t even checked social media for a week. He yawned.

‘Hm, angel, here’s something that might interest you,’ Crowley called out.

‘Yes, dear?’

‘Someone’s put a book of prophesy on a website or something?’ Crowley drawled as he clicked on the link.

‘Oh, I see,’ Aziraphale replied, turning the page of his book, ‘does it say which one?’

‘Yeah, hang on let me click on it. Huh. Wait,’ Crowley frowned in concentration as he read. As understanding dawned his face twisted into one of horror, ‘Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Angel!’

Aziraphale slipped a bookmark in his book and rapidly appeared at Crowley’s side, mindful of the note of hysteria in Crowley’s voice.

Crowley looked up, his eyes golden all the way to the edge, ‘Angel, they are claiming it is a second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter.’

Aziraphale shook his head tightly, his hands finding each other and twisting, ‘No, no. Agnes Nutter only wrote one book of prophesy. Just the one. The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, published in 1655.’

‘Are you sure?’ Crowley said, sitting up and gesturing widely.

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip, ‘I can be sure a second book was not _published._ It is always possible a second book was _written_.’

‘Yeah,’ Crowley answered with a gulp,’that makes sense, doesn’t it? So, this could be a second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter?’

‘Crowley, choose a prophesy at random,’ Aziraphale said, twisting his hands rapidly.

‘At random?’ Crowley said with a frown, ‘why?’

‘Just do it,’ Aziraphale replied tersely.

Crowley sighed. He scrolled down on his foldable screen, the words slipping rapidly by, and stabbed at a particular prophesy with his index finger to choose. He cleared his throat and read,

‘Gardene of faithless virtue

Serpent by your side

Still doubt my worde, principality?’

Aziraphale’s eyes widened, ‘Oh!’

‘Fuck!’ Crowley shouted, ‘fuck! It really is her, isn’t it? Fuck!’

Aziraphale nodded his eyes fluttering closed. He sighed a deep shuddering sigh. His eyes fluttered open again. ‘Crowley, be a dear and print them for me. Can you do that?’

‘What?’ Crowley said, looking up. He took in what Aziraphale had said, ‘Yeah, print them. Yeah,’ he clicked the print button and walked into their study to fetch it from the printer.

Aziraphale brushed down his clothes and adjusted his bow-tie. While he was waiting for Crowley to return he turned on the kettle and fetched a pad of paper and his best pen. When the kettle had boiled he made a teapot of tea, carefully setting up the teapot, milk jug and two tea cups on the table next to the paper and pen. He sat at the table himself to wait. His hands slipped into a prayer position at his lips and his eyes fluttered closed as he lost himself in thought. A second book of prophesy. Agnes Nutter must have seen beyond Armageddon. Would the prophesies contain insights into the new alliance between Heaven and Hell? Would they contain insights into the coming war? Heaven and Hell against humanity… it was too terrible to contemplate. He pursed his lips together and shifted in the chair as he heard Crowley approach.

Crowley coughed, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably, ‘If you wanna talk to her I could, I dunno go for a drive or something.’

‘No, no, dear,’ Aziraphale replied with a shy smile, removing his hands from his face, ‘I’m not talking to her. Just waiting and thinking. Show me?’

Crowley put the printed prophesies in front of Aziraphale. Aziraphale sighed, his hand gently caressing the pages. ‘The tea would be brewed by now. Feel free to make yourself a cup, dear.’

‘Na,’ Crowley said, ‘will pour yours though. Start reading, angel.’

Crowley poured Aziraphale a cup of tea as Aziraphale slipped on his glasses and began to read. He hummed and sighed as he read, making notes on his note pad, and writing on the prophesies themselves. As each page was read he slipped it upside down onto a fresh pile on the centre of the table. Gradually, the read pile grew and the unread pile shrunk.

Crowley watched and paced, and collapsed onto the couch every so often, reading some of the prophesies on his phone, then groaning—he didn’t understand them as Aziraphale would—and getting up to pace again. Finally, Aziraphale was done. He slipped off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked down at the undrunk cup of tea and miracled it warm again.

‘Well?’ Crowley said, walking forward, gesturing widely.

Aziraphale sighed and sipped his tea, ‘It will take time to understand fully. Well, not fully, as best I can. I don’t think I’ll able able to understand them fully until we are in the midst of it all. I’ll need days to study them in depth. But these are definitely the prophesies of Agnes Nutter.’

‘And?’ Crowley said with another wide open gesture.

Aziraphale bit his lip, ‘And, it seems The Big One as you call it is going to happen soon. Heaven and Hell against humanity. That’s what this reads like to me.'

Crowley nodded furiously, 'Right. Right. Yeah. Shit. Ngh.’

He stepped forward and knelt at Aziraphale’s feet. Aziraphale shifted so he was facing Crowley rather than the table and Crowley rested his head on Aziraphale's lap, breathing in the warm scent of him. It always comforted. Aziraphale carded his fingers through Crowley’s long hair. He slipped his fingers in deep, finding the scalp and massaging gently. 

‘We’ll find a way,’ Aziraphale whispered, ‘We always do.’

**Twelve years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eighteen years until The Big One**

**Eden Maternity Hospital, ironically in almost the exact spot where the Garden of Eden used to be**

Gabriel appeared just outside Eden Maternity Hospital in the early hours of the morning. It was still dark, the stars and moon the only source of natural light. Gabriel adjusted his suit and waited, his eye running over the spot where he knew the eastern wall to the Garden of Eden used to stand. It was fitting that they would be born here. New humans to design a new world—a world like the one God had originally intended—and they would be born within Eden.

Gabriel couldn’t help but remember the last time he had seen the Heavenly mix with the human in the form of a child. Mary, mother of Jesus, had been far more gracious, more understanding of the honour that was being given her, than this particular mother, also named Mary, was being. Making the announcement of the conception of Jesus Christ to Mary had been one of the highlights of Gabriel’s career. Of course, it hadn’t all gone quite as planned after that… Gabriel tried to push all of that aside. This wasn’t time to dwell on past failures or even this present day Mary’s disrespect. It did not matter. Unlike the mother of Jesus, this Mary would not raise her children. 

Beelzebub, as always, was a little late. Just a little. The newly developing alliance was an unprecedented success. Both sides agreed on that. But the demons did like to maintain their little games. It was to be expected. After all, if Gabriel was honest with himself, the angels maintained little games of their own.

Beelzebub materialised by Gabriel’s side, seemingly growing out of the ground. Any humans in the vicinity simply looked away. Beelzebub dusted herself down, ‘Gabriel.’

‘Lord Beelzebub,’ Gabriel answered with a little nod.

‘All in order?’ Beelezebub asked with a little grin.

Gabriel nodded, ‘Just happening now. Shall we?’

Beelzebub nodded and they began walking into the hospital together, their shoes clipping on the hard floor, ‘and you are sure thiszzzss will work?’

‘Of course it’ll work,’ Gabriel replied with a patronising tone, ‘Think about it. Every time the Heavenly or the Hellish has been mixed with human, humanity has won out. The nephilim. The demonic children your lot have occasionally spawned. Jesus Christ. Adam Young. Even Jesus Christ and Adam Young. The very highest, and well, lowest, pedigree possible and still...’

‘Humanity breedszzzs true,’ Beelezebub replied with surety to her buzz.

Gabriel sighed and shook his head, ‘And you know why? Because every time we let them be raised by humans. It is a question of nature vs nurture. We need to take control of the nurture.’

‘That waszzssn’t suposzzzsed to happen with Adam,’ Beelzebub countered, ‘the traitor…’

‘Yes, yes,’ Gabriel waved this away, ‘and Jesus wasn’t supposed to veer so wildly off script. Destroying temples, living with whores, be kind to each other,’ he sighed, ‘the point is, if we raise them far from Earth, in Heaven and Hell, then we control nurture. We control it perfectly. If we control nurture then the Heavenly and Hellish parts of their nature will win out. Like Jesus and Adam they have the very best of pedigrees. In fact, they both have best of Heaven and Hell in the mix. A three mix parentage. Can you imagine? They’ll be able to see that the world is corrupt, that it needs to be fixed, and they’ll have both the power and the insight into humanity needed to actually fix it. They are the solution.’ Gabriel ended with certainty. Then he smiled wildly, his lavender eyes glinting and added, ‘Have a little faith.’

Beelzebub snorted at this. They turned a corner, continuing up a stark hospital corridor. At this time of night the hospital was quite empty of visitors.

‘And if it doeszzzsn’t work?’ Beelzebub asked.

‘We destroy the world,’ Gabriel said with a shrug.

Beelzebub smiled wildly, ‘Soundszzs good to me.’

They reached the reception desk of the birth suites. Gabriel approached the nurse at the front desk and offered a sickly sweet smile along with his hand for a handshake.

‘Hello. Gabriel. I’m from the adoption agency. I believe there’s an unmarried mother giving birth to twins tonight: Mary Gardner. I’m here to take the children.’

The nurse frowned, looked down at his hand for a moment and deliberately did not reach out with her own, ‘Excuse me. You’re what?’

Gabriel sighed and snapped his fingers. The nurse’s eyes went blank and glassy. When she spoke her voice sounded different, like she herself was far away, ‘Oh an _unmarried_ mother. Of course. The children must be put up for adoption, little bastards. Can’t let the whore raise them. Need to find a nice married family with a mother and a father. Birth suite six.’

Beelzebub snorted, amused.

Gabriel marched straight to birth suite six and Beelzebub followed, smile playing about her lips. When he found the right room Gabriel opened the door without knocking and strode right in. Beelzebub followed without hesitation.

‘Just birthing the second placenta, doctor,’ the midwife called out from the mother’s side, assuming it was the obstetrician checking in. Then she turned and saw two strangers: Gabriel and Beelzebub, ‘Wait. Who are you?’

‘We’re from the adoption agency,’ Gabriel said as Beelzebub closed the door.

‘You!’ the mother cried out from the bed, hugging her two tiny babies—their ebony skin covered with blood and chalky-white vernix from the birth—close to her chest, ‘I said no! Get out of here! He’s the lunatic I was telling you about!’

‘You heard her,’ the midwife said forcefully, her arms stretching out defensively to cover the bed with mother and two children from sight, ‘get out of here.’

‘She’s unmarried,’ Gabriel said calmly as if that explained everything, ‘those children are the result of sinful fornication.’

‘What has that got to do with anything?’ The midwife shouted, leaning towards the security button. But before she could press it Gabriel clicked his fingers. The midwife’s eyes went blank and her arms flopped uselessly to her sides. She stepped away from the bed slowly and zombie-like. She spoke in a monotone, ‘of course. Unmarried. The baby must be adopted. Children need a mother and a father. We can’t let the slut raise them, they’d be bastards. I’ll leave you to it.’

‘No! No!’ Mary cried, her voice shaking with terror, ‘you said you’d protect us! You said there’d be security!’

But the midwife was already leaving the room.

‘Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’ the mother wailed helplessly.

Mary tried to stand—a difficult task with two babies in hand and legs still turned to jelly from the birth—but her body was racked with a contraction. The placenta was coming. Gabriel and Beelzebub positioned themselves on either side of the bed, Gabriel on the right and Beelzebub on the left, making further escape attempts impossible.

‘Be reasonable,’ Gabriel said shaking his head and smiling down patronisingly as if the mother were a naughty child, ‘it is a great honour. You are going to be mother to the saviours of the entire world. The mother to beings on the level of Christ and the Antichirst. Isn’t that wondrous?’

Mary shook her head and held the two babies closer, ‘No. They are _mine_. I carried them. I birthed them. They are my babies.’

‘Well,’ Gabriel chuckled, ‘now you are just being selfish. They are daughters of the divine, daughters of Heaven and Hell. They must be allowed to reach their full glory.’

‘They are _not_ daughters of the divine,’ Mary said fiercely her dark eyes shining, ‘They are _my_ daughters.’

‘Of course they are divine,’ Gabriel said with an indulgent smile, ‘How else can you explain their immaculate conception?’

‘Immaculate conception?’ Mary spluttered in shock, ‘I’m not a virgin. You are fucking nuts! Help! Help!’

Beelzebub chuckled. Gabriel’s eyes darted towards her, taking in the demon’s amusement. It hastened his own fury.

‘Right that’s it,’ Gabriel said angrily clicking his fingers, ‘you don’t actually have a choice, sweetheart.’

A trail of blood began to trickle down the Mary’s legs, a trail that turned into a river as her body was hit with another contraction. Mary looked down at the blood, ‘no, no…’ she muttered, shaking her head, tears rolling down her cheeks. She kissed her babies on their heads—her beautiful and perfect babies— and whispered to them, ‘my babies…you will always be my babies. You have my blood in your veins and my love in your hearts. I love you. They cannot take that away. Noone can take that away…’

Mary looked up to Gabriel and Beelzebub. She carefully gathered the last of her strength and whispered with venom, ‘You mess with things you do not understand!’ Mary finished her speech by spitting in their faces.

Beelzebub laughed loudly, enjoying the mother’s final act of rebellion, wiping away the spit with her fingers and wiping them in turn on the sheets of the bed. Gabriel smiled furiously as he wiped the spit from his face with a perfect silk handkerchief, looking for all the world like it was taking all of his self restraint to hold back from punching Mary.

Mary’s eyes fluttered and her grip on her babies weakened as the blood continued to gush and she lost consciousness. Gabriel took the baby on the right, scooping her out of her dying mother’s arms. She was as perfect as any newborn baby. A beautiful little doll with ebony skin and a wild mess of black hair. Her skin was still smeared with blood and milky white vernix. Gabriel spoke to her softly, reverently, ‘Welcome. I name you Eve. You will not make the same mistakes as your namesake. Eve, you are destined to re-make the world.’

Beelzebub scooped up the baby on the left, a perfect replica of Eve, ‘And I name you Lilith. You shall fix the world forever and reign over it in glory.’

Gabriel and Beelzebub left, babies in hand, carefully avoiding the ever expanding pool of blood in the middle of the birth suite floor.

They walked out of the hospital grounds, each carrying their baby like a parcel with no warmth or understanding of how to hold newborn human child. When anyone questioned them, a quick click of Gabriel’s fingers and a reference to unmarried mothers made the questions dissolve and disappear.

The sky was just starting to lighten, the stars disappearing under the onslaught of the stronger power of the sun. Morning was approaching. But it was still cool. As they exited the hospital building the chill touched the babies’ skin and baby Lilith began to cry, a high wailing noise, bleating, more animal than human. Eve quickly joined in, as if compelled to share in the misery of her sister. Gabriel and Beelzebub did not respond to their cries. They simply stood for a moment, where the wall around Eden had once stood, and then they disappeared together, babes in arms, taking them far from the Earth.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil are spending forty days on Earth as ordinary humans at the bequest of the Archangels and the Dark Council. By the end of those forty days they need to have a solution, to understand how to fix creation and the forty days are up.
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was sent a second copy of the second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter. She put it on a website. Crowley found that website and now Aziraphale has the prophesies.
> 
> Adam Young is a writer. He still lives in Tadfield with Dog.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eight days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale sighed as he finished one last read through of Agnes Nutter’s unpublished book, slipping his glasses off his face and rubbing his eyes. Crowley stopped his relentless pacing to gaze at his angel with soft tenderness.

‘C’m here, angel,’ Crowley whispered, pulling Aziraphale up, off his chair, and then away from the dining table, steering him towards the couch. Crowley pulled a compliant Aziraphale onto the couch, onto his our lap, and into his arms. For several moments Corlwey simply held his angel tightly, arms wrapped firmly around his middle. Then, Crowley began to massage Aziraphale’s shoulders and Aziraphale moaned in relief as the tension in his muscles eased.

Crowley kissed the back of Aziraphale’s head, mouth nuzzling into the soft white curls and kept massaging, ‘Sh, angel, S’alright. We’ll figure it all out.’

Crowley kept massaging until he could feel Aziraphale fully relax beneath his fingers. Only then did he stop, his hands reaching around Aziraphale to, once again, hold him tightly. Crowley squeezed, nuzzling into Aziraphale’s neck. When he spoke, his words puffed against Azraiphale’s skin and tingled down his spine, ‘I knew that New Alliance stuff meant the war was coming. But I didn’t think they’d be so far ahead. Figured we had centuries at least. Maybe another six thousand years even.’

‘Yes,’ Aziraphale said with a puzzled frown, ‘how did they get a working alliance between Heaven and Hell up and running so quickly? It must have happened within a decade or two. After six thousand years poised for war, to build a fully functioning alliance in a mere handful of decades? It beggars belief.’

Crowley stilled as the realisation—the clear and inevitable truth of it—hit him at full force. For a moment he sat perfectly still, the realisation playing out in his mind. Then, he was all movement and noise as he reacted loudy, ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘Oh! Aziraphale! The alliance isn’t new. Well, it is new. It isn’t not new. But also not really new.’

Aziraphale turned around, meeting Crowley’s amber eyes, confusion lining his forehead.

‘There’s been back channels,’ Crowley continued, ‘not a public alliance obviously, but claudistine meetings, secret deals. They have been working together. Well, in a sense, in secret.’

Aziraphale’s stomach turned over and he shook his head quickly, his eyes widening in horror. Even as he could see that Crowley had leapt to the right conclusion, to the only conclusion that made sense, he longed to deny it, ‘that’s… no, surely not?’

‘Why not?’ Crowley answered with a shrug, ‘makes sense, doesn’t it?’

Aziraphale reeled. He never would have guessed this. He would never have thought of this. He felt like he was going to be sick, ‘Are you—are you suggesting that the Archangels have been in cohoots with the Dark Council _for centuries_ maybe even for _thousands_ of years? Are you saying that the highest angels in Heaven have been engaging in secret dealings with their demonic counterparts?’

Crowley snorted, not understanding Azriaphale’s increduality, ‘is that really so hard to believe? After all, you were.’

Aziraphale stood quickly, whirling around to face Crowley at the same time, hands fisted at his side, arms shaking with barely suppressed rage. He towered over Crowley still sitting on the couch. Aziraphale was as furious as Crowley had ever seen him. The perfect picture of divine wrath, incandescent with rage. In that moment, Aziraphale looked exactly like the right angel to wield a flaming sword. And Crowley, Crowley immediately cowered, squirming at his feet, as his best friend, his lover, transformed into the wrath of Heaven.

‘I didn’t mean it, angel,’ Crowley whimpered his eyes bleeding gold all the way to the edge, his mind whirling with how what he had just said could be taken so very wrong, so very wrong indeed, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that…’

But Aziraphale’s fury wasn’t for Crowley. It was never for Crowley. Frustration, yes. Fond annoyance, regularly. Even, at times, out and out anger. But not this. Never this blind and violent fury.

Aziraphale was too far gone in his own anger to realise that Crowley has misread him in that way. Aziraphale’s fisted hands shook at his side and he continued on in his own rage, oblivious to Crowley’s fear, ‘Gabriel that pompous, that _arrogant_ … Fools and villains the lot of them. Every last Archangel! And the Metaron! Worse than villains, _hypocrites_! They make me sick. That total…total… _fucking prick_!’

Crowley could barely breathe. But then it came to him in a rush. Aziraphale’s anger was not directed at him. It was not directed at him. Oh, no. Aziraphale’s wrath was not to be feared at all. Crowley’s body, so tense, instantly relaxed, slipping from threat, to safety, to happiness. It was perfect. So bloody perfect. Crowley had waited so long to hear Aziraphale truly rage against Heaven. He had waited and waited and he had never thought he’d actually see the day. Crowley stared up at Aziraphale in wide-eyed awe and gasped, ‘oh, angel…’

The familiar term of endearment brought Aziraphale back to himself. He shook his head slightly, the wrath disappearing from his eyes, a little pink blush dusting his cheeks as he looked away sheepishly, ‘Oh dear. That was… I must apologise, dear boy, I was quite overcome.’

‘No, no,’ Crowley said kissing Aziraphale’s hands, ‘wonderful angel, darling ‘Ziraphale, don’t ever apologise for that. Not ever.’

Aziraphale looked away, embarrassed. He cleared his throat. Crowley kept kissing Aziraphale’s hands until Aziraphale pulled them out of Crowley’s grasp and sat back down on the couch, pulling Crowley into his embrace. Crowley cuddled in, head on his lap, lying down on the couch.

‘All that time. We were being so careful. I was being so careful. To the detirment of both of us. And they, they had a secret arrangement of their own,’ Aziraphale whispered, hand finding Crowley’s crimson hair.

For a moment or two they simply sat in silent contemplation of this. Then Crowley broke the silence by saying completely deadpan, ‘S a little bit funny.’

Aziraphale looked down, into Crowley’s golden eyes. He began to laugh, a loud hysterical laugh, and Crowley instantly followed. They guffawed and spluttered for a full minute.

When the laughing finally settled, Aziraphale went back to running his hand through Crowley’s hair, his fingers catching gently on the curls.

‘Oh!’ Azraiphale gasped, ‘You don’t think there are other angels and demons who, _you know_ , are like us?’

Crowley’s eyes widened, ‘like us?’

‘Hm,’ Aziraphale said, nodding, ‘maybe there are other angels and demons who have _known_ each other.’

‘What do you mean the intermingling thing,’ Crowley drawled wiggling his fingers, ‘or the human stuff, the fucking?’

Aziraphale shrugged, too interested in the question to react to Crowley’s language, ‘I suppose I was thinking of the intermingling. But either. Both. Are there any other angel and demon, well, couples I suppose?’

Crowley shook his head, his face grimacing in disgust, ‘I doubt it. A bit of secret cooperation ‘s what I had in mind. Not actual friendship or love or anything. Now, angel, lets never speak of that again. I may never get those images out of my head.’

Aziraphale’s lips quirked up in amusement, ‘It is a little unpleasant to consider.’

‘Unpleasant? It’s foul. I don’t want to think about Gabriel intermingling with Beelzebub or Michael giving Hastur a bl…’ Crowley shuddered and made little choking noises, poking his tongue out and grimacing in a dramatic display of disgust, ‘I can’t even say it.’

Aziraphale chuckled, his eyes crinkled with fondness for Crowley.

Crowley shook his head, clearing the unpleasant thoughts away. He looked up at Aziraphale with a wide mischievous grin and said, ‘call Gabriel a fucking prick again?’ And just like that they were back to giggling hysterically.

As the giggles settled, Crowley sat up, leaning in close to Aziraphale’s ear, his breath tickling against Azraiphale’s skin and drawing out a shiver, as he whispered, ‘pleassse’.

Aziraphale gasped and Crowley shifted to look deep into Aziraphale’s eyes, all humour gone. All humour gone and replaced by hunger. Aziraphale smiled fondly and tenderly brushed a long crimson curl back behind Crowley’s ear. He swallowed hard and said with careful enunciation, ‘Gabriel is a fucking prick.’

Crowley smiled widely, predatoraily, and climbed onto Aziraphale’s lap so he was straddling him. He leaned in closely and pressed his lips to Aziraphale’s, kissing him with a fierce passion. ‘Sssay it again.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eight days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie and Lil jumped up from their position on the couch immediately as Gabriel and Beelzebub materialised in their flat, their bodies instantly buzzing with alertness.

As usual, Gabriel had seemingly appeared from above and Beelzebub from below, but they had both appeared simultaneously.

As Lil quickly leapt to attention, she knocked her bowl of strawberries and yogurt over and it landed on the floor, the white and red splattering across the floorboards and the spoon clunking repeatedly as it bounced.

Beelzebub brushed her suit down and Gabriel stretched his neck as Evie and Lil bowed before them, as deeply as they were capable.

‘Archangel Gabriel, Lord Beelzebub,’ they spoke as one, faces down low to the ground.

‘Well, Eve, Lilith, I hope you’ve spent your time wisely,’ Gabriel said with a grin, his lavender eyes glimmering.

Evie nodded, returning to full height, slipping her hands into place at her sides to hide the shaking. She remembered that Gabriel liked the answers to his questions to be spoken and added in a wavering voice, ‘we did yes, Archangel Gabriel.’

‘And did you roll in the filth of the world?’ Gabriel continued his nose wrinkling in distaste.

Lil nodded, jumping in, her voice wavering too, sensing a trap and saying what she could in the hopes that it could be avoided, ‘we did, yes, as you instructed, Archangel Gabriel, to learn.’

Gabriel grimaced, ‘how awful. I trust you did, in fact, learn from the experience?’

‘Yes, Archangel Gabriel,’ Evie and Lil spoke as one.

Beelzebub snorted in amusement, ‘it iszzs the hunger isn’t it? It iszzs the hunger that’szzs to be feared?’

‘Yes, Lord Beelzebub. Your wise words served us well,’ Lil replied with bow.

Beelzebub smirked, ‘Then you learned something, Lilith.’

‘So, you have a plan then?’ Gabriel said with a grin, ‘a plan to re-make the world anew? To fix it? To return it to being as the Almighty herself intended?’

‘Yes, Archangel Gabriel,’ Evie said, her words echoing through the room.

‘You see,’ Gabriel said to Beelzebub, ‘I told you they wouldn’t let us down. For years we have sheltered them, cared for them, raised them, and now they are going to repay our great kindness. They know they owe their very lives to us and they are going to fulfill their destiny and fix the world.’

Beelzebub sniffed, ‘I trust it will be…glorious.’

Gabriel looked back to Evie and Lil, ‘the Lord Almighty made the world in seven days and so you will have seven days to re-make it.’

Evie’s dark eyes widened in shock. This was unexpected. A time frame had never been mentioned before and Evie and Lil had never thought to ask. They’d always simply assumed that if they had a plan, they’d get the time they needed. They should have known better, ‘only seven?’

Gabriel glared, ‘Seven days. I’m sure you will manage. You have a plan, right, Eve?’

Evie gulped, nodding fast, sweaty hands pushing into her own thighs, ‘yes, yes we have a plan.’

‘Got it all in hand,’ Lil added with a quick grin, her bravado kicking in.

‘Excellent,’ Gabriel nodded decisively, ‘because, remember, if you fail there will be consequences.’

Evie could feel herself shake. She quickly slipped her hands behind her back to mask it, sweaty hand graping sweaty hand and holding herself steady.

Gabriel turned to Beelezebub, eyebrows raised, amused by Eve’s fear, ‘are you ready for that eventuality?’

Beelezebub grinned maliciously, ‘Oh yeszzzz.’

So it would be the tortures of Hell then. Evie and Lil reeled while, for several moments, their minds filled with all of the terrifying possibilities.

Gabriel smiled a sickly sweet smile, ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. Just don’t fail.’

Gabriel laughed and Beelezebub joined in.

‘Oh,’ Gabriel said, ‘one last thing: you’ll be wanting to be your whole selves again.’

Gabriel clicked his fingers and Evie and Lil felt the little dam inside themselves, the little lock and key put there forty days ago by Gabriel himself, break. The part of them that was of Heaven and Hell unfolded and unfurled from where it had been lying dormant—trapped, in fact—inside. For the first time in their lives they were fully and completely themselves: of Earth and Heaven and Hell. Their dark eyes flashed with power and, for a moment, halos of flame were visible above their heads.

In spite of the lingering fear, Evie and Lil groaned and their eyes fluttered closed with the relief of it. At last, at long last, they were themselves. When they opened their eyes, Gabriel and Beelzebub were gone.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Eight days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Tadfield**

Adam added the final tweaks to another chapter. The characters had been nothing but trouble today. After a full day of writing—the sun had long since set—his mind felt cloudy and soft.

Adam wanted to nothing more than to simply walk away from his desk and take Dog for a long walk in Hogback Wood. But, he knew Pepper would still be onto him. And he really did need to make a better effort to keep in contact with his friends. Why they couldn’t have simply all stayed living in Tadfield he didn’t know. So, before going for his walk he checked his messages, scrolling through them on his unfolded screen, his UD still sitting rather eccentrically on his desk.

There was a message from Wensleydale. Pepper had been in his ear no doubt. It was a link to a news article about a series of government announcements, from a whole variety of governments all around the world, all occurring simuteanously through complete coincidence, to make every park a dog park. To the article Wensleydale added, ‘this isn’t your doing, is it?’

Adam snorted in amusement. It was a reference to an old game. As children they had pretended that Adam had remarkable powers, that he had the the power to change reality. Adam wrote a short message back, speaking it aloud and letting his UD’s voice recognition software capture it. He clicked the button on the foldable screen propped up on his desk to send it instantly to Wensleydale’s own UD. He smiled as he pictured Wendsleydale, probably playing with his kids at this time of day, receiving Adam’s reply, ‘afraid not. Bloody good idea though.’

Adam flicked his UD off and stepped away from the desk stretching.

‘Dog! Time for a walk!’

Dog jumped up and yipped, quickly running to Adam’s side.

Every park a dog park. It _was_ a good idea.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> The forty days are up. Evie and Lil are, for the first time, their complete selves: Heaven and Hell and Earth. And they have a week to fix the world. 
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was sent a second copy of the second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter. She put it on a website. Crowley found that website and now Aziraphale has the prophesies.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

‘We’re ready, Evie,’ Lil said, reaching out and squeezing Evie’s hand, ‘time to put your plan into action.’

Evie bit her lip and nodded slowly. Lil was right. It was time. They had stalled enough. After all, some fine tuning would probably be needed and they only had seven days to ensure that the world was completely fixed, returned to being the world that the Almighty herself had intended.

Since Gabriel and Beelezebub’s visit Evie and Lil had spent their time learning how to be their complete selves. They had experimented with their power on Earth for the first time and found that their abilities were limited only by their imagination.

Evie and Lil had spent their time tweaking the world in small ways. They tested their abilities and found their confidence through instigating little simple improvements—dog parks, chipperies on every corner, a renewed worldwide enthusasism for board games, a sudden abudence of puns and a new craze for eating marmalade out of the jar—and had watched and learned as the world was moulded and shaped under their hands.

They had experimented and tested and learned from their experiences. They could put it off no longer. It was time to put aside the little tweaks. It was time to actually fix the world. It was time to enact Evie’s plan.

Lil squeezed Evie’a hand again, ‘it is a good plan, Evie. Besides, we only have seven days.’

Evie nodded, ‘You’re right,’ she sighed, ‘you are right.’

‘Where do we start?’ Lil said with a sad smile.

Evie let go of Lil’s hand and opened her foldable screen. It was covered with calculations and equations written in Arabic numerals, multiple coding languages, ancient scripts and scripts unrecognisable to anyone on Earth except, perhaps, to a certain traitorous angel.

‘Well,’ Evie explained with a nervous sigh, ‘it’s all here and ready to go: the Ten Commandments and the algorithms.’

Lil nodded, ‘Right. A helping hand, like you said. Help people stick to those really big rules that they keep choosing anyway.’

Evie nodded, ‘exactly, and to make choices in their own long-term best interest.’

‘Right,’ Lil said with a shrug, ‘it’s like an upgrade. Free will 2.0, now with improved decision making capabilities.’

‘I hope so,’ Evie said, chewing her bottom lip. It was a good plan. It made sense. Surely it was what the Almighty has originally planned? To actually teach humanity how to make choices? How to use free will? If only the Almighty had actually answered Evie’s prayers though. Evie would feel much better about it if she knew for certain that it was what the Almighty herself wanted.

‘C’mon,’ Lil said impatiently, ‘Let’s do it.’

‘Alright,’ Evie sighed, ‘Let’s start by building in an exemption for ourselves. It’ll probably need tweaking and that’s easier if we aren’t part of the code,’ Evie’s eyes fluttered closed.

Lil closed her eyes too, reaching out and taking Evie’s hand in her own. She joined her power to Evie’s and supporting her, working as one, they built the exemption into their own UDs.

‘Done,’ Lil said with a grin as she felt it slide into place, ‘what’s next?’

‘Next, we link the Earth Observation Files in. We combine all of the data that humans have been collecting on themselves with all of the data of Heaven into one massive data stream,’ Evie explained, eyes still closed, already feeling it out, already starting to make the connections.

Lil’s eyes fluttered closed and she helped. It was like re-directing a river and helping it to flow into the ocean. It took time and energy but eventually it was connected: the single greatest repository of data ever to exist and it was alive, changing with every moment, with every decision.

‘And now, we add my coding,’ Evie whispered, guiding the algorithms in, stitching the Ten Commandments into the fabric of the data.

Lil assisted and supported her, lending her energy, anticipating her movements and aiding them seamlessly. They were good at this. They had used their powers in harmony all their lives, a perfect and practiced duet.

Eventually, Evie sighed as the last of the code clicked into place and it began to work on, to modify and guide the flow of data. Little eddies and currents appeared, a million tiny feedback loops, allowing the data, carried by algorithyms to flow back to the source.

‘It is done,’ Evie said hoarsely. Her eyes opened and she smiled. ‘Can you feel it?’

Lil nodded, eyes still closed, ‘yes,’ she grinned, ‘I can feel it, Evie, I can feel it.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Twelve days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Morgan poured cups of tea for herself and her dad, setting the kettle back down on the bench. Then she paused. Her UD suddenly felt warm. Not just warm, hot and buzzing. Her stomach twisted and she shook her head, trying to clear the strange fuzzy feeling as her own power flared automatically, reaching out to the UD.

‘Everything alright, sweet pea?’ Newton said, frowning from his position sitting at the kitchen table.

‘Yeah fine,’ Morgan said, as her head cleared and her UD cooled. She tuned into the UD’s aura, running her other hand over it briefly. She didn’t find anything unusual. ‘I think my UD was about to break and I automatically fixed it,’ Morgan added with a shrug.

‘Ah, that makes sense,’ Newton said with a proud smile, ‘hey, remember when you were a kid and you’d collect everyone’s old phones and tablets, fix them, supercharge them and sell them to the other kids at school for a tidy profit?’

Morgan laughed, ‘don’t remind me.’

‘You made quite tidy sum before mum and I found out,’ Newton added, pushing his glasses back up from where they’d slipped down his nose.

Morgan chuckled, for a moment lost in a happy memory, ‘yeah and you made me give it all away to charity.’

‘It was a good life lesson,’ Newton said decisively.

Morgan shook her head, ‘yeah I suppose it was,’ she answered, carefully removing the teabags and adding a splash of milk to each cup. She passed her dad his tea and sighed, ‘I’d better check the website. There could be some new ideas since yesterday.’

‘Whatever you say, sweet pea,’ Newton said with a grin as she took a sip of tea.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Jennifer flicked through her social media feed as her baked beans cooked in the microwave. Rob had a new job. Jeanie was on holiday in Spain. Incredible photos. Always looked good in a swimsuit, Jeanie. Niamh had a new boyfriend. Wow. Niamh had a gorgeous new boyfriend. A doctor.

Jennifer took her baked beans out of the microwave and dumped them into a bowl. It was not a glamourous meal. But ever since Daniel had left Jennifer just didn’t have the energy to cook. At least baked beans were a vegetable, right?

She walked over to the couch and kept flicking through social media as she ate. She saw another photo of Niamh’s new boyfriend. Just my type, she thought to herself. Good for her. _Good for her_.

As Jennifer folded her screen back up she felt genuinely happy that her friends are doing so well. Incredibly happy, in fact. She was vaguely aware that this wasn’t how she normally felt after accessing social media, particularly not when her own life was going badly. And it was going so very badly just at the moment. But she couldn’t put her finger on what was different.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**Harvard University, Massachusetts, USA**

‘Elijah? What are you doing here?’ Katie called out from her seat in the lecture hall.

Elijah took his usual seat next to Katie and frowned, ‘Studying? We’ve been studying bioinformatics together all year. Remember?’

Katie shook her head, ‘Yeah, but what happened to switching to music? You said you were going to give it a crack. Live your dream.’

‘Music?’ Elijah swallowed hard. Yes. That’s right. _Music_. He was going to quit bioinformatics—he’d only enrolled in it to please his father anyway—and give music his very best try. Yes. Music. He’d always wanted to learn music. His parents had never let him. Elijah stood finding his legs unexpectedly shaky. He started gathering up his books, shuffling them in his hands. Shuffle. Shuffle. What was he doing? Oh, yes. He sat back down and smiled, ‘Hi, Katie.’

Katie laughed, ‘Elijah! What are you doing?’

‘What do you mean?’ Elijah laughed, ‘We’ve been taking this course together all year.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A house in Dublin, Ireland**

Connor howled in pain as he stubbed his toe, ‘Oh! G-G-G-G’ his face twisted up in a whole other way as he tried to get the word out.

Finn frowned, ‘What?’

‘For C-C-C-C argh!’

Finn laughed, ‘what are you trying to say?’

Connor sighed in frustration, ‘I dunno.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A flat in Shanghai, China**

‘Li? What are you doing?’

Li looked up from her screen. She blinked her eyes rapidly and shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Just looking at maternity dresses, mama.’

Li’s mother frowned, looking over Li’s shoulder. Sure enough, the screen was filled with maternity dresses. Li’s mother frowned, ‘but you’ve had the baby, dear one. He’s one week old today.’

Li looked up at her mother. The events of the past week came back to her in a rush. The birth. Taking her baby home. Learning to breastfeed. Yes. Of course. ‘I’ve had the baby.’

‘Yes, dear,’ Li’s mother said, her voice soft with worry.

‘I’ve had the baby,’ Li said one last time, ‘Why was I looking for maternity dresses then? That makes no sense.’

As if to reinforce the point Li’s baby began to cry.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A house in Rome, Italy**

Giulia gently fingered the china statue of the Madonna. The Madonna was chipped, just a little chip where her blue shroud met her sublime face. She was old. An antique. She had been in the family for years and Giulia inherited her when her grandmother had died. The chip was a little imperfection that had always added to the Madonna’s perfection. 

Giulia picked up the Madonna and hesitated for just a moment before smashing her onto the ground. The Madonna shattered into a million tiny china pieces.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A house in Sydney, Australia**

‘Mum, dad…’ Oliver said walking into the kitchen, interrupting his parent’s conversation.

His mum looked up from chopping vegetables and his dad from preparing lamb.

‘I just want to let you know, I have quit karate.’

‘But Ollie, you love karate!’ His dad replied, his forehead twisted in concern, ‘you’ve always loved karate, and all your friends are there.’

‘True. But I will never be good enough to compete professionally. I am, however, gifted in mathematics. From now on I will be focussing my attention on additional mathematics study, with a view to pursuing a career in the data analysis. It is, after all, one of the most lucrative careers. Given my ability in mathematics it is the logical choice for me.’

‘But, honey, the important thing is that you do what makes you happy,’ Oliver’s Mum said, ‘you are gifted in mathematics, we saw that from an early age, and we will definitely support you in doing extra study if that’s what you want. But you’ve never had a passion for data analysis. Weren’t you talking about becoming a marine biologist?’

Oliver shook his head, ‘A childish idea. My mind is quite made up. Excuse me, I have signed up for an online course on the application of statistical techniques to bioinformatics. I want to complete the first module before dinner.’

As Oliver left the kitchen his mum turned to his dad, ‘Is it just me or was that a very strange conversation?’

His dad sighed, scratching his head, ‘Not just you. They never mentioned this in the parenting books.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Seven days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Crowley woke late to an empty bed. In fact, Aziraphale’s side of the bed was long since cold. He brushed his hand over Aziraphale’s pillow and sighed. He rolled over, onto his back, looking up at the ceiling: what were they going to do? Where the prophesy was concerned, Crowley felt terribly useless. All that careful study and working out. It was so much more Aziraphale’s particular wheelhouse. Crowley had pieced together some of the more important insights from people’s comments on the website and handed them up to Aziraphale. But that was all he’d been able to contribute. Pretty useless. Anxiety swirled in his stomach.

Damn it! Anxiety suddenly flared into anger. Crowley had known this was coming. He has known it would happen. Why hadn’t he done something sooner? He should have kept better tabs on Heaven and Hell. Looked for signs. Prepared for the war. Something. _Anything_. Anything was better than the absolute fuck all he had done.

Damn it! He’d fucked up again. Stupid. So stupid. Crowley’s hands curled into fists and for a moment he was nearly overcome by the compulsion to punch the wall next to the bed. Fuck. Crowley sat up in bed and took a few deep shuddering breaths until the urge passed.

Calmed, Crowley stood and miracled himself some clothes with a quick wave of his hand. Go help Aziraphale. That was the best thing to do. The only thing he could do.

Crowley sauntered out of the bedroom and into the living room. Aziraphale was sitting at the dining table, frowning over the printed pages of the prophesy, his gold glasses sitting on his nose and his pink tongue poking out slightly in concentration.

Aziraphale didn’t see Crowley at first and Crowley was desperately grateful for this. At the sight of Aziraphale—bloody hell, he was absolutely adorable—Crowley nearly lost his footing and fell flat on his back so intense was the sudden rush of exhilaration.

Crowley stood, gaping at his angel as his heart thudded, his knees weakened and his mouth become dry and useless. Oh, fuck. It was just like the old days: when he’d come across Aziraphale unexpectedly after a decade with only his own imagination for company. Crowley swallowed hard, and licked his lips.

Aziraphale looked up, his eyes dancing with delight, ‘ _Crowley_! You’re up!’

‘Ngh.’

Aziraphale chuckled at what he thought was a drowsy Crowley and waved his hand towards the expresso machine. It responded by making Crowley a fresh expresso. Crowley slunk into the kitchen and downed the expresso in one gulp. Get ahold of yourself, he thought, you bloody idiot. Crowley took a deep breath, very deliberately conjuring up his cool exterior before sauntering into the living room.

‘How’s the prophesy puzzling going, angel?’ Crowley drawled with consciously put on swagger.

Aziraphale smiled and Crowley’s heart melted. He instinctively hid it with a smirk.

‘Slow, I’m afraid. Far too slow,’ Aziraphale sighed, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes, ‘But I haven’t been focussed on it that long. I woke to the realisation that we needed to inform our neighbours in the garden about the prophesies. I had a good chat to Arthur about it this morning. You never know, they might come up with some ideas.’

‘You went ahead and spoke to them without me?’ Crowley said, eyes flicking towards the garden out the glass doors. He could hear the ridiculous hurt in his own voice and he whinced.

Aziraphale frowned, hearing it too, ‘I’m sorry, dear. Did I overstep? I didn’t think you’d mind.’

Crowley snorted, ‘S’fine. Whatever. I am going to go get supplies, alright?’ he slipped on his glasses and strode out of the house, not waiting for an answer.

Crowley moved quickly to the safety of his Bentley, slipping into the driver’s seat and slumping over the steering wheel. What’s wrong with me, he thought to himself, as he started up the engine.

The Bentley revved pleasantly and started to blare out the Queen song ‘Best Friend’. Crowley growled. Not what he was in the mood for. He snapped his fingers and his Velvet Underground CD appeared in his hands. Crowley still kept a CD player in the Bentley and a CD collection because CDs he could move in and out of the car, saving them from the unfortunate fate of turning into yet another Queen’s greatest hits album.

Crowley put the CD in the player and sighed in relief as the song ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ filled the car. He pulled out, onto the country road, mouthing the words to himself,

‘But mostly you just make me mad,

Baby, you just make me mad…

Thought of you as my mountaintop,

Thought of you as my peak,

Thought of you as everything.

I’ve had, but couldn’t keep,

I’ve had but couldn’t keep…’

Crowley zoomed along the road with no destination in mind, music blaring, soul soothed by the movement and the music. When ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ came on Crowley turned up the volume and sung that too,

‘When you think the night has seen your mind,

That inside you're twisted and unkind,

Let me stand to show that you are blind,

Please put down your hands,

'Cause I see you…’

He sighed and hit repeat, playing it again and again.

Eventually, Crowley realised that he’d driven into London. Mayfair, actually. Right near his old flat. The flat he didn’t have anymore. Weird. He turned around and drove back to the cottage. 

When Crowley returned he was feeling much more himself. The drive had done its job. He strode into the cottage with a renewed sense of confidence only to find Aziraphale utterly absorbed in re-reading the prophesies. Again.

Crowley sighed. That’s right. The prophesy. The Big One. The big fucking mess. An alliance between Heaven and Hell and Crowley had known it was going to happen and still he’d done fucking nothing.

‘Right. Not much I can do here, huh?’

Aziraphale didn’t even look up, ‘just got to concentrate, dear.’

Useless. Absolutely useless. And I saw it coming, Crowley thought, I should have done something. Why didn’t I do something? I finally got everything I’ve always wanted and now I’ll lose the lot because I’ve fucked it up, I’ve absolutely fucked it up. Crowley’s hands once again curled into fists.

Crowley stalked back and forth a few times. He felt like he was burning up, anger coursed through his veins looking for release. He stalked out into the garden, waving away the multitude of spirits like a cloud of mosquitoes and was soon busy, hands in the earth, pulling up weeds. The spirits had quickly learned that Crowley liked to keep to himself while gardening and gave him wide berth.

Crowley allowed himself to become absorbed in his task, tuning out to the ethereal masses around him. He had seen this coming: The Big One. He had known that Heaven and Hell were going to unite. Why didn’t he do anything to prevent it? To prepare? Why didn’t he? Stupid. Absolutely fucking stupid. With a deep sigh he miracled the pile of weeds away. And now it was all turning to shit. They were fucked. He wouldn’t be able to protect Aziraphale. They’d be destroyed. And he’d never get the opportunity to tell Aziraphale that he, that he loved… wait. That wasn’t right, Crowley thought, I _have_ told him. He looked up to see Aziraphale in the living room, bent over the prophesy.

Crowley shook his head, trying to clear it, and his gaze was captured by the roses. Black spot! One of the rose bushes—the lady of shallot, in fact, had black spot. His gaze narrowed and he stalked towards the bush, ‘black spot,’ he whispered menacingly fingering the leaf, ‘you have brought black spot into my garden. You stupid, stupid, fuck up. You could have lived here in this perfect garden. Bet it is everything you’ve ever wanted huh? But no. You had to _fuck it up._ Do you understand? It is _your_ fault. You weren’t careful enough. You weren’t clever enough. There’s only one thing to do.’

With one hard tug Crowley pulled the bush out of the ground and threw it on the grass. The tangled mess of roots still had clumps of dirt caught up in them. He clicked his fingers and the bush disappeared, just as the weeds had done. He sneered at the shivering plants around him and the gaping hole in the ground where the bush had once been.

But the sneer soon fell from his face. He looked up at Aziraphale, still in the living room, head bent over the prophesy. Aziraphale didn’t like his ‘plant executions’ as he called them. Had some crazy theory that they were symbolic or something. Nonsense of course. The kind of nonsense that comes from reading too many books. But still. He’d promised Aziraphale that he’d stop. He _had_ stopped. Hadn’t he? So why did he forget that? How could he forget a promise to Aziraphale? His stomach twisted. He’d let him down. Again. And just in that moment Aziraphale seemed so very far away. Unreachable. A great yawning hole of loneliness opened up beneath him and he was as unrooted just as that rose bush had been.

‘Are you alright, old friend?’

Crowley turned to see the spirit of DaVinci floating near by. He turned back to watch Aziraphale and found himself overcome by a desire to tell DaVinci the truth, ‘You know what? I don’t think I am.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't yet listened to I'll Be Your Mirror and Pale Blue Eyes, you need to do that right now. Neil Gaiman has said that I'll Be Your Mirror is Crowley's favourite song and Pale Blue Eyes is so obviously about Aziraphale it is ridiculous. No wonder Crowley didn't want Aziraphale to put the album on. Listen and drown in Crowley feels. 
> 
> [I'll Be Your Mirror](https://youtu.be/WXETLPCogao).
> 
> [Pale Blue Eyes](https://youtu.be/PK4DeMYtumc).


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil have a week to fix the world and they have put into action Evie's plan: free will 2.0. It's just a little hand-holding. 
> 
> Morgan Pulsifier-Device was sent a second copy of the second book of prophesy by Agnes Nutter. She put it on a website. Crowley found that website and now Aziraphale has the prophesies.
> 
> Crowley is not himself. He's confused, angry and quickly sinking into a malaise.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Six days until The Big One**

**A house in Liverpool, UK**

Amelia sighed as she got up. Her knees weren’t what they used to be. She turned on the kettle and waited in the kitchen for it to whistle. When it did, she poured the water into her mug, giving the teabag a little jiggle. While she waited for the tea to brew Amelia tapped on her UD, issuing a few voice commands that prompted her UD to tune into BBC radio one.

‘We have another caller on the line. For listeners just tuning in we are focusing on two remarkable stories of breaking news: the first one is a worldwide ceasefire. Sources say the ceasefire is global and affects every known conflict. People are simply refusing to kill each other. The world has not seen a similar event since the Christmas Truce on the Western Front of World War I in 1914. How the ceasefire spread overnight to cover the entire globe and all known conflicts is a mystery that defies explanation. The second remarkable story is the destruction of religious idols, statues, paintings and so forth in the name of our Lord. Again, the phenomenon is global and how it had spread worldwide overnight is also a mystery. Now, caller, which of these two remarkable stories are you ringing in to comment on today?’

Amelia fetched the milk. A ceasefire? Destroying religious idols? About time. She wondered if she could help. In fact, Amelia wondered why she’d never realised that religious idols had to be destroyed before.

‘It is the UDs! You are all being controlled through your UDs! The internet has turned against us! If you don’t have one on for God’s sake don’t put one on! Communicate using old devices: phones, radios, anything but UDs! And stay away from the internet! Only remove the UDs off people you know while they are asleep or incapacitated. If they are awake they may turn violent! I will be at Big Ben at 10 O’clock every day. Come and meet me and we…’

The caller was abruptly cut off.

Amelia stood, terrified, milk carton in hand, milk overflowing from her cup of tea and spreading over the beach top.

The presenter’s panicked breathing could be heard down the microphone, ‘the UDs… the… Oh G-G-G… I um… oh… I…I…that’s right I was going to take a caller, wasn’t I? Apologies listeners. We seem to have lost the caller on line one. But there’s someone waiting on line two.’ 

Amelia shook her head, trying to clear it. What? Oh, no, the milk! She wiped it up carefully. Really, she thought, what is wrong with me?

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Six days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale tenderly stroked Crowley’s hair while Crowley slept. Crowley’s arm curled around Aziraphale’s body.

Yesterday, Aziraphale had discovered that Crowley had gone to bed early— in fact, Crowley had been sound asleep well before dinner time— and he knew instantly that Crowley was in distress. A little investigating in the garden had confirmed his suspicions. One of their rose bushes was gone. Clearly, Crowley had slipped and staged a plant execution. Aziraphale knew that the missing rose bush would be growing wild somewhere in the South Downs countryside. He still remembered the deep, shaking relief he had felt years ago when he had confirmed that Crowley’s little executions were staged. Still, the fact that Crowley had slipped in this way, well, it wasn’t good.

Crowley didn’t agree with Aziraphale’s belief that Crowley’s treatment of his plants reflected his treatment of himself. Actually, ‘didn’t agree’ was somewhat of an understatement. But Crowley didn’t need to agree. Aziraphale knew what it meant.

The testimony of DaVinci had only confirmed it all. DaVinci wouldn’t break Crowley’s confidence but when he saw Aziraphale in the garden he had ensured that Aziraphale knew that Crowley was in great anguish.

Given Crowley’s state of mind there was only one thing for Aziraphale to do and Aziraphale had done it. Aziraphale had joined Crowley in bed. He had set himself up with the prophesies, books and snacks on his bedside table, everything he needed to wait for Crowley to wake. With Aziraphale in bed beside him, Crowley had soon curled around his angel and slept soundly like that all night and through the dawn. Aziraphale had spent the time reviewing the prophesies which he now knew by heart, reading his books, and snacking on grapes and biscuits, miracling away the crumbs. And now it was well and truly morning.

Aziraphale stroked Crowley’s ruby red locks again. He just hoped that Crowley would talk to him when he woke, that he would unburden himself so they could face it together.

Crowley began to stir. ‘Ngh, angel,’ he whispered in his sleep. Crowley nuzzled into Aziraphale’s chest and slipped a leg over Aziraphale’s own.

Oh my, Aziraphale thought, as Crowley’s arousal was immediately apparent to him in the hard length against his leg. As if in response to Aziraphale’s thought Crowley began to thrust into Aziraphale’s thigh, whimpering to himself. Surely a good sign, Aziraphale thought, all things considered. Perhaps a good sleep had lifted Crowley’s mood. Crowley had always had a bit of a temper and could even be a bit moody if he’d gotten himself into a real state. But his bouts of malaise didn’t last long and they lifted much faster nowadays.

Aziraphale chuckled warmly, ‘Well, good morning to you too.’

Crowley’s eyes fluttered open. For a moment he simply stared unblinking up at Aziraphale’s face. Then he leapt up as if burned, taking the blanket with him, wrapping it around himself, ‘Fuck! You’re not a dream. Shit. Shit. I’m ssssorry ‘Ziraphale. I’m so sssorry. I thought you were a dream. Not that I often dream about…Nagh,’ made a little choking noise and a deep blush stained his cheeks, ‘Did I fall asleep drunk or somethin’? ‘m sssso sssorry angel you know I’d never… I’ll get outta here, yeah?’

Crowley turned to escape, blanket and all. Aziraphale frowned.

‘Crowley, stop!’ Aziraphale said with a commanding tone and Crowley immediately stopped, still turned towards the door, his head hung low, utterly defeated.

‘Go on, smite me,’ Crowley said in a tiny voice.

‘What are you on about, dear? Whether you were dreaming or not your attentions are always welcome. You know that. It is hardly the first time that you’ve…’ Aziraphale’s voice trailed away as Crowley turned back to Aziraphale, his eyes wide in shock and golden all the way to the edge.

Crowley swallowed hard, ‘What?!’

Aziraphale took in Crowley’s state carefully. This wasn’t Crowley’s usual malaize. This was something else, something new and sinister. Crowley simply wasn’t himself. Aziraphale licked his lips and pushed down his rising terror. He would have to be calm for Crowley. When Aziraphale spoke he spoke calmly and carefully, ‘I said that your attentions are always welcome. And this isn’t the first time you’ve woken in such a manner. Why, sometimes I even wake you with attentions of my own, don’t I?’

‘You do?’ Crowley said, voice hollow and his unblinking golden stare focussed unrelentingly on Aziraphale. He swallowed hard, ‘yes, you do.’

Crowley looked around the room, as if taking it in for the first time. He licked his lips, ‘we are in South Downs, aren’t we?’

‘Yes.’

‘We live together.’

‘Yes,’ Aziraphale smiled.

Crowley breathed out a great sigh of relief and tried to choke back tears. He failed. They came anyway. Aziraphale leapt up from the bed, quickly closing the distance to Crowley and embracing him. Crowley melted into Aziraphale’s arms sobbing.

‘What’s happening, dear?’ Aziraphale whispered, ‘Tell me.’

‘I forgot,’ Crowley choked, ‘I got confused.’

Aziraphale tenderly brushed Crowley’s hair behind his ears, ‘you forgot we were together?’

Crowley nodded, ‘How? How could I forget that for G-G-G-G…’ Crowley’s face twisted into a look of horror, ‘I can’t say it. I mean I shouldn’t be saying it, anyway ‘m a demon. But I _can’t_ say it, angel!’

Aziraphale frowned, his forehead lined in worry. Then realisation dawned and his eyes widened, ‘Oh!’ he gasped as Agnes Nutter’s prophesy came to him, ‘What was etched in stone will be set in stone...’

‘Aziraphale, help me,’ Crowley cried.

‘I will, my dear, I will. I promise,’ Aziraphale whispered, holding Crowley close, the words of Agnes Nutter’s prophesy echoing through his mind. But then, why had it only affected Crowley? Why was Aziraphale himself not affected? Aziraphale licked his lips and tested this out, ‘for God’s sake. Good Lord.’ Well, theory confirmed. Aziraphale was not affected. Were angels immune, perhaps? It would be just like Gabriel to build in as exemption for angels.

Crowley looked up, forehead lined in confusion, blinking away his tears and trying to work out what Aziraphale had realised.

Just as Aziraphale was about to explain a desperate tapping at the bedroom window captured their attention. Crowley wiped his tears away and miracled up some clothes and sunglasses. Aziraphale adjusted his own tartan pajamas and opened the window. The spirit of DaVinci floated there.

‘Aziraphale, Crowley,’ DaVinci said with a little bow, if a spirit can be said to bow, ‘We are getting some strange reports from those of us who can leave the garden. It appears to be worldwide. People are acting, well, quite bizarrely. I think it may have something to do with what is happening to you, old friend.’

‘Right,’ Crowley said with a sigh, ‘right, yeah.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘I think I already have an idea about what is happening. Tell Arthur we’ll be down in a minute.’

Aziraphale normally dressed the human way but he did not want to waste time this morning so instead he simply clicked his fingers and his clothes were mircaled from his wardrobe onto his body. He adjusted his bowtie.

‘Angel, I’m still not right,’ Crowley choked out, ‘It is like I keep getting sucked into the past… No, it is like someone else is choosing. They are choosing from my own tendencies, my own history but I’m not in control. I slip into old patterns and I get confused… I have to fight them to be able to choose,’ he chewed at his bottom lip, ‘Does that make sense?’

Aziraphale considered all of this carefully. Then he nodded, ‘Yes, I think it might. We can fix this. Trust me. I nearly have it.’

Crowley nodded, tears welling in his eyes behind his sunglasses, ‘Fortunately that’s an old pattern. Trusted you long before it made sense.’

‘I know you did,’ Aziraphale smiled with warm affection. Aziraphale slipped his hand into Crowley’s and squeezed it, ‘so you remember.’

Crowley smiled and they walked to the garden together, through the big glass doors. Arthur was waiting, along with a whole congregation of spirits floating behind him, DaVinci notable in the crowd.

Arthur nodded, ‘Aziraphale, Crowley. I’ll get right to the point. People appear to be acting strangely all over the world. Apparently, there’s a global ceasefire. Not initiated top down by any governments. People just won’t kill each other anymore. Oh, and robberies seem to be down too. Obviously, those changes are good ones. But there’s more. There’s been a mass destruction of religious art: paintings, statues, anything portraying divinity or even reverence in any form from any religion. And individuals are simply, well, acting strangely. Making odd choices and returning to old patterns that no longer make sense. This is to do with the prophesies isn’t it?’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Yes it is. Thank-you, Arthur. That confirms it for me. The question is: how?’

Aziraphale looked to Crowley, a little frown of concentration creasing his forehead, ‘It is affecting Crowley but not me…’

‘It is affecting the living worldwide,’ Arthur said, ‘but no-one in the garden.’

Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed still looking at Crowley. It was affecting the living all over the world. But it wasn’t affecting the dead. It was affecting Crowley. But it wasn’t affecting Aziraphale. Now, it could be, it could be as simple as angels and the dead being exempt. But that explanation did not lead to any solution for Crowley and there were other differences between Crowley and Aziraphale, weren’t there? Could there be another reason why Crowley was affected? Aziraphale’s eyes flicked down to Crowley’s wrist and back. Ah, yes. Crowley had always been up to date with the latest technology, hadn’t he? Once again, Agnes Nutter’s words came to him and he whispered them to himself,

‘Spin, spin, spin

Threads of silk holde the worlde together

But silk can also make a nette

And there be a cob.’

Aziraphale turned and started backing Crowley back towards the couch, still holding his hand.

‘Angel, what are you?’ Crowley gulped, eyes darting around behind the sunglasses.

‘Trust me, dear,’ Aziraphale said as he pushed Crowley onto the couch and pinned him down with his superior strength. He shifted Crowley’s arms up so he could hold them both with his left hand and, with his right he tore off Crowley’s UD in one swift motion, throwing it to the floor. He clicked his fingers and it sparked and died.

Crowley sighed deeply in relief as his mind was once again his own. The need to fight for choice, the unbidden flashes of the past disappeared and once again he was Crowley, fully in the present moment, able to make his own choices without disruption.

‘Better?’ Aziraphale whispered, looking into Crowley’s eyes as best he could through the sunglasses.

‘m much better. Cured. Back to normal,’ Crowley grinned and added in a whisper, ‘and a little turned on.’

Aziraphale chuckled, ‘you wily old serpent.’

‘Angel, not that I’m complaining but you’ve still got me pinned,’ Crowley said softly, ‘don’t think ‘m the instigator in this little scenario.’

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale blushed, eyes darting away as he got off Crowley and adjusted his jacket and bow tie, ‘we should test it. Make sure it really worked. Take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘Gladly,’ Crowley smirked, ‘for God’s fucking sake!’ he grinned, ‘easy,’ he licked his lips and gave Aziraphale a little sideways look, ‘Shall I break the others too?’

Aziraphale tutted in disapproval, ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’

Crowley preened at getting the desired response.

Aziraphale stepped closer to the open doorway, addressing the spirits in the garden as well as Crowley, ‘it is clear what’s happened: it is the web acting through the universal devices controlling everyone's behaviour. Everyone is being forced to obey the Ten Commandments,’ Aziraphale frowned, his teeth worrying at his lower lip as he thought, ‘There’s another element to it as well. A broader loss of choice.’

‘Algorithms,’ Crowley chimed in.

Aziraphale looked to him to continue.

‘You know,’ Crowley said waving his arms around, ‘algorithms. Machine learning. You read one book about dragons and then you get driven to the brink by dragon book suggestions from your e-reader for a year. Or you buy a toilet seat and you see ads for toilet seats every time you google something. Or you get ads on social media specifically targeted to your demographic that’s actually stuff you hate. Or your social media feed is ranked according to what you normally click on so you never learn anything new, eventually it is all so narrow it is boring. No one actually understands the equations or anything the computers jus’ learn and spew out this stuff that makes no sense. Bloody annoying. I had a hand in its development in the early days.’

Aziraphale frowned, ‘Why?’

Crowley shrugged, ‘its bloody annoying, isn’t it? Pissed off people take it out on each other, don’t they?’

Aziraphale tutted and shook his head in disapproval.

‘I wouldn’t do it _now_ ,’ Crowley moaned dramatically.

‘We need to do something,’ Arthur declared, ‘we need to act straight away.’

‘Yes we do,’ Aziraphale agreed with a decisive nod.

‘We can start warning people,’ Arthur continued, ‘Remove their UDs. Some of us have gotten rather good at having effects on the physical world. With their UDs removed they can warn more people. It is a start.’

‘Excellent suggestion,’ Aziraphale smiled. He turned to Crowley, wringing his hands ‘what should we do? Could we, I don’t know, turn the internet off?’

Crowley snorted, ‘Nah, angel, we can’t just turn the internet off.’ He grinned as an idea formed, ‘But we could make some trouble.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Six days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Anathema slipped off her usual glasses and slipped on the glasses for her UD. She used the AR screen to quickly and efficiently navigate the headlines of the day, looking for signs of the prophesies, for signs that something was happening. And boy, did she find them! The world-wide ceasefire and the mass destruction of religious art for a start. Other headlines hinted at sweeping changes too: government officials confessing to corruption, a staggering overnight decline in the rate of robberies, and worldwide talk of a law to make working on the Sabbath illegal (along with much debate about which day exactly the Sabbath was).

Anathema’s mind whirled as it tried to connect the headlines to her knowledge of the second set of prophesies. Of course. Of course. Anathema knew that she needed to alert Newt and Morgan straight away, before reading the articles in any more depth. She slipped her UD glasses back off and started walking from her study to the living room. Such news, she thought to herself, the ceasefire for a start. Wait, her mind hooked and snagged on that, a ceasefire just made sense didn’t it? Why would you kill anyone? And, her mind was caught again, of course robberies are down. Why would anyone steal? It wasn’t news. It wasn’t strange. It was all very sensible. And the destruction of religious art?That had been coming for a long time, surely? Only right.

By the time Anathema had entered the living room she has quite forgotten why she was even there. Newt and Morgan looked up at her expectantly.

‘Mum? You were going to check the headlines?’ Morgan said with a frown.

‘Oh, yes,’ Anathema said, ‘there’s nothing strange at all. All the usual sensible stuff that’s been coming for a long time. Everything is just as you’d expect. No signs of the prophesies,’ her eyes wandered around the room taking in the pagan artefacts amongst the bric-a-brac. Her skin itched.

‘Right. Well, I hope your lecture goes well, my dear,’ Newt said with a smile.

‘Lecture?’ Anathema repeated in an empty voice.

‘On thing-a-me-bobs?’ Newt said with a worried frown.

‘Oh, I can’t possibly go ahead with the lecture. There’s simply too much to do. We have to figure out what Agnes wants from us. Yes, yes I need to fulfill Agnes’ prophesy,’ Anathema said, her eyes glassy, ‘It is my duty as her decendent. I can see that now.’

‘Anathema, my love, we said we wouldn’t…’ Newton chimed in but Anathema cut him off.

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Anathema said with bite, ‘I’m a professional descendent after all. I was raised for this. But first,’ Anathema darted into the kitchen and returned with the one of the large material bags she used for shopping. She buzzed about the room at a furious pace, dropping items in the bag: statues of the goddess, charms, and other artefacts.

‘Mum, what are you doing?’ Morgan said softly, her voice trembling a little with worry.

‘Purging,’ Anathema replied, her voice sounding weirdly empty, ‘Good for the soul. You keep working on the prophesies. Don’t stop for anything. I’ll be back in a moment and we will work out Agnes’ instructions for us together. It is our duty, Morgan.’

Anathema marched out of the house, into the back yard. Morgan went to follow but Newt grabbed her arm, ‘Hold on sweet pea, let her go.’

As Anathema went into the back yard, Newt guided Morgan to the kitchen window and they peaked out, watching Anathema destroy thing after thing.

'It’s normally china or ceramics,’ Morgan said, ‘something she doesn’t actually like. She loved some of those statues and charms. She’d spent years collecting them.’

‘I know, sweet pea,’ Newt said with a sigh, ‘I’ve never seen her do this. Pressure must have gotten to her.’

Morgan frowned. Her mother was strong, invincible. She always knew what to do or say. She moved through the world with a surety and grace that Morgan could only hope to have one day, one distant day when she was older. Even her bouts of sadness or anger had a certainty to them, a confidence. Watching her mother relentlessly destroy charms and goddess statues she treasured, Morgan was struck by the terrifying realisation that her mother was human and ordinary, vulnerable in all the same ways as everyone else.

Newt wrapped his arms around his daughter, ‘I’m afraid your mother is back under the thumb of a woman who’s been dead for four hundred years.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Six days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie and Lil scrolled through the news together, perched side by side on the couch, looking at Lil’s UD screen unfolded to full size on the coffee table in front of them.

‘Well, the ceasefire is good. No killing. That’s got to be an improvement,’ Lil said with an air of forced optimism, ‘definitely a good thing.’

Evie made a non-committal noise. Lil skipped over the second highest news story in the news feed—she didn’t want to face it quite yet— and moved on to the third news story. It was much more promising.

‘And robberies are down worldwide,’ Lil said, ‘No stealing at all in fact. Also good. Clearly good.’

‘Hm,’ Evie hummed, forehead creased in though.

‘All these confessions of corruption have to be good too, huh? Everyone’s owning up to it all, telling the truth, clearing the air. Given time, this’ll eliminate corruption. Imagine that: not a single corrupt government on the planet,’ Lil continued, ‘definitely a good thing. So that’s three good things. Three _definitely_ good things.’

Evie made another little noise and scrunched up her nose. Lil hummed to herself as she kept scrolling. She paused. She couldn’t keep avoiding it. Lil scrolled back up to the second story in the feed and they read it together, Lil occasionally mouthing the words.

Evie chewed on her bottom lip and fidgeted with her skirt.

Lil sighed.

‘Did you think they’d destroy _all_ the religious art?’ Lil said with a frown.

Evie shook her head slowly and swallowed hard grabbing a pillow and clutching it close to her chest, ‘I didn’t think they’d destroy _any_ of it. Didn’t even occur to me.’

Lil sighed and drummed her fingers on the coffee table, ‘I wonder what Archangel Gabriel will think about that? Heaven’s interpretation of idolatry has changed a few times over the years. I can’t even remember what their current stance is. Not to mention the interpretation of what is and is not worshipping the Almighty. If I recall correctly, the whole all-gods-are-aspects-of-the-Almighty-seen-from-a-limited-human-perspective interpretation won out in the end, which makes the bit about no other gods before me redundant. They are all her in a sense, if you squint and hold your breath.’

‘I don’t know,’ Evie said still shaking her head, ‘the Archangel Gabriel probably wouldn’t care much either way. Art, technology, books, a coffee table. It is all just material objects to him, huh?’

Lil hummed her agreement and nodded.

Evie leaned forward for a closer look at the screen as she flicked through the images: Catholic priests leaning on tall scaffolding as they painted the Sistine Chapel a crisp white, Buddhist monks carefully disassembling the giant statue of Vairocana Buddha in Todai-ji in Nara, an angry crowd throwing rocks at a statue of Shiva in Nepal, a crowd in Barcelona smashing statues of Jesus and Mary and throwing religious relics onto a bonfire.

‘I wonder what Lord Beelezebub would think?’ Lil whispered, leaning over to look at the images, ‘it is all very um…destructive, isn’t it?’

Evie’s stomach turned and she began to shudder. She clutched hard at the pillow to stop the shivering. Lil glanced up from the screen and quickly took in her sister’s state. Lil wrapped her arms around her and held her close, ‘it’s alright. I’ve got you, Evie, I’ve got you.’

Evie leaned in close, her head on Lil’s shoulder as her tears slowly fell, leaving wet tracks down her face, ‘I’ve fucked it up. God is love, Lil. _Love_. Why would a God of love want that?’

Lil held Evie close and gave this her full consideration, as she patted Evie’s head in a comforting way.

‘Well,’ Lil answered after a time, ‘the other hand, no one is getting killed. Think of that Evie: how many people are alive today because of us? I mean art is all very well but in the end they really _are_ just material objects, huh? So maybe, on balance, this is still an improvement.’

Evie shook her head, pulling away from Lil’s embrace to wipe at her tears, ‘It isn’t the objects, Lil. It is this,’ she scrolled through the pictures again, and pointed to the people in them: every single face was twisted in gleeful delight at their own wanton destruction. Every face was set in certainty, fixed in the conviction that their destruction, and their glee at their destruction, was righteous. It was an expression that both Evie and Lil were very familiar with. They’d seen it too many times to count on the faces of the angels and demons who had raised them, on the faces of the angels and demons they had grown up with, played with, been taught by. And if there was one lesson they’d learned well and learned early it was this: beware a being wearing that expression. For there would be no reason and no mercy. In short, it was an expression that Evie and Lil had learned to associate with utter terror.

‘Ah. Yeah. I see what you what you mean,’ Lil said with a shudder of her own.

Evie wiped away the last of her tears and sighed, ‘what are we going to do?’

Lil ran her hands through her dark hair, catching a strand with a finger and twirling it as she gave it all some thought. Eventually she spoke, ‘well, you said there might be bugs, Evie. The basic idea is still sound. No killing: brilliant. No idols: sounds good, some problems in practice. We’ve just got to get the rules right. You said the key was to build in just a few big important rules, rules the Almighty herself surely gave, rules that humans themselves have chosen again and again. So, I reckon this just proves that some of the Ten Commandments didn’t really come from the Almighty. Someone upstairs added a few. We’ve just got to get rid of the troublesome extras and the plan will work.’

‘Right. Yeah. Okay. Get the rules right,’ Evie swallowed hard, ‘damn. I should have tested out each and every commandment against the data, confirmed thst every one was chosen by humans again and again.’

Lil sighed, ‘yeah, and that’s exactly what we would have done if we could have. You know that. But we didn’t have time, Evie. So, you made an educated guess and you got it a bit wrong.’

‘Yeah,’ Evie said, ‘yeah, I guess,’ she sighed, ‘if only the Almighty would just _talk_ to us.’

Lil reached out for Evie’s hand and squeezed it, ‘It’ll be alright, Evie. Look let’s go ahead and remove the rule about the idols and the one about no other Gods before me. I reckon they are the troublesome two. Everything else seems to be working just fine.’ 

Evie nodded, ‘yeah, yeah, alright,’ but the queasy feeling in her stomach didn’t fully settle.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil have a week to fix the world and they have put into action Evie's plan: free will 2.0. It's just a little hand-holding. Already they've discovered that some of the rules don't work so well in practice and have done a little tweaking. The rules that remain seem to be working really well though.
> 
> Aziraphale worked out, with help from Agnes Nutter's prophesies, that the problem is the UDs. Crowley's has been removed and he is back to himself and ready to make some trouble.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Five days until The Big One**

**Hogback Wood**

Adam sat alone in Hogback Wood, throwing a ball for Dog. He sighed. He should be writing. Getting his latest novel wrapped up. Only a couple of chapters to go. But he had writer’s block, big time. Adam never had writer’s block! He’d long since thought of it as a myth, an excuse. Nevertheless writer’s block had descended two days ago, wrapping around his mind like a thick fog. If Adam stepped away from his desk then his ideas would return and he’d feel like writing again. But when he sat at his desk posed to type the ideas would dry up. He’d feel stifled, caged.

Strange memories were coming back to Adam too. Thoughts and dreams from childhood. The British Inquisition! He laughed to himself. And Tibetans living in secret tunnels! Oh, and replacing nuclear reactors with sherbet lemons! The Them had always had the best games. Oh, and the one where he was the Antichirst and they faced off against the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and then Satan himself! That one was epic.

Adam shivered. The memories were suddenly so vivid. He could remember not just the game but actually seeing Satan. And The Doctor was there, but with strange eyes and black wings and he was with an angel. No, not The Doctor, a _demon_ who looked like one of The Doctors from Doctor Who. Adam laughed at his childhood imagination. Why was it so clear? Adam could see it all perfectly inside his head. Just like a real memory. Imagination shouldn’t be that clear, should it? His imagination, usuallly so dependable was either drying up altogether or supplying him with memories that were entirely too vivid. Adam sighed. What was wrong with him?

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Five days until The Big One**

**The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, London**

‘Evie!’ Glenn called out from the community room.

Evie slipped in, ‘Hello Glenn, Fiona. What are you playing today?’

‘We are playing poker,’ Fiona answered with a grin holding her cards out like a fan. Her grin shifted to a puzzled frown, ‘it isn’t as fun as I remember though.’

Glenn laughed, ‘I’d say that you were only saying that because I keep getting the better hand but you are right. It isn’t as fun as I remember either. I mean I’ve got an absolutely brilliant hand,’ Glenn waved his cards about, showing both Evie and Fiona, ‘so clearly I’m going to win. What’s the point?’

Evie shrugged, ‘don’t ask me. I’ve never played poker.’

‘I still say we are forgetting something. There’s more to the rules than this,’ Fiona said with a shake of her head, ‘I just can’t for the life of me remember _what_.’

‘I looked rules up, Fi,’ Glenn countered, ‘face it: poker is just one of those things that isn’t as good as we remembered.’

Fiona frowned in distaste. She hated it when things worsened with age. They should, by rights, improve. Otherwise, what was the point?

‘Anyway, what do you think of this worldwide burning of religious art, Evie? Everyone was doing it yesterday and everyone is horrified today. Funny thing is even I thought it made some kind of sense yesterday,’ Glenn laughed and shook his head, ‘I can’t even remember why now.’ 

Evie shuddered and swallowed hard, forcing a smile onto her lips, ‘oh, just one of those things I expect.’

‘They had an academic on the BBC this morning saying it was mass hysteria,’ Fiona said with a frown, ‘You know, like when people danced themselves to death in the Middle Ages or when all those people said they met aliens in a space ship with a message of world peace or that cruise ship of people who said they found Atlantis. Remember that, Glenn? All before your time, Evie.’

Glenn snorted, ‘Yeah I remember. My girlfriend at the time insisted she saw the aliens. Said one of them looked just like a Dalek. Daleks don’t bring messages of world peace, I said. If you’d have really met a Dalek you’d be dead and if you can’t understand that you haven’t watched nearly enough Doctor Who. Anyway, all that mass hysteria nonsense is just a fancy way of saying that no one knows what happened.’

‘Hm,’ Fiona nodded, thinking this over, ‘probably.’

‘Definitely,’ Glenn said decisively, ‘experts don’t like admitting that they don’t know what’s going on and neither do governments.’

Fiona nodded. She frowned for a bit over her hand of cards—surely there was something she could do with this awful hand, but what?— then a thought occurred to her and she looked across to Evie, ‘Why are you here anyway, Evie? I didn’t think you were on today.’

Evie shook her head, a dopey smile spreading across her face, ‘I’m not. I’m just here to meet Mia. Her shift finishes soon and we are going out for lunch.’

‘Oh,’ Fiona sighed her face crumpling with sympathy, ‘oh, Evie, dear, she isn’t here. She didn’t start her shift. She showed up and quit. No notice. It was all quite dramatic.’

Evie frowned. A cold feeling of dread washed over her, ‘What? But why? She loves it here. And she, she didn’t say anthing about this to me… ’

‘She reconciled with her father, apparently,’ Glenn said with a shrug, ‘He wants her to live with him, work for him, all that. So, off she went. He’s a politician or something, I think.’

‘No,’ Evie whispered, as her stomach twisted sharply in fear, and her hands began to tremble, ‘oh no, no, no… She can’t. He _hurt_ her. He’s _dangerous_.’

For the briefest flicker of a moment Fiona and Glenn understood. For the briefest of moments they shared in Evie’s horror. Glenn moved to stand, to take evasive action. But understanding drained out of them both a moment later. Glenn shifted again in his seat and and their faces transformed from expressions of horror to something all the more horrifying to Evie: calm and unmoved.

‘He’s her father, dear,’ Fiona said with a tut as if it was Evie who wasn’t seeing things clearly. Her gaze flicked back to the poker game, utterly unconcerned.

‘Hm,’ Glenn said, looking at his own cards, ‘you have to honour your mother and father, Evie.’

And, at once, the reason for Mia’s absence—the reason why she had suddenly and without warning decided to reconnect with her father and to obey a ridiculous and dangerous request that she move back in with him, that she work for him—slotted into place. And, dear God, it was Evie’s fault. It was Evie’s fault!

‘No, oh no!’ Evie cried out, lifting a tremberling hand to her mouth, shaking her head emphatically, ‘I didn’t mean it like that. The Almighty didn’t mean it like that!’

Fiona frowned, barely lifting her gaze away from the poker game, ‘the Almighty didn’t what, dear?’

But Evie was already running, bolting out of the Orchard to find her sister waiting on the pavement outside, tears streaming down her face, heart pounding with the urgency of removing another of the Ten Commandments.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Five days until The Big One**

**A terrorist cell, New York City**

‘We can’t kill anyone, obviously,’ the leader said, addressing the other devotees in the terrorist cell, ‘not even ourselves.’ He paused for a moment. He had a vague feeling that they used to be able to kill people. But that made no sense. Obviously, you can’t kill people. The feeling faded. He coughed, ‘But we can do everything short of killing.’

‘Do you mean torture?’ one of the devotees spoke up.

‘Yeah,’ the leader answered with a grin, ‘I mean torture. They are going to wish we did kill them.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Five days until The Big One**

**The Pentagon, Washington DC**

‘We can’t kill anyone, obviously,’ the General said, addressing the President.

‘Obviously,’ the President answered.

They both paused. People had killed people in past wars. In every past war in fact. How had that happened? For a moment they were both frozen by the contradiction and the feeling that there was something important bound up in it. But the feeling quickly faded.

‘However,’ the General continued with a cough, ‘If one of our soldiers, operating in a war zone, happened to fire a weapon, not shooting to kill, mind, aiming say for the legs or something, but accidentally, purely accidentally it ended up being a fatal shot. Well, that’s no one’s fault is it?’

The President considered this a moment, ‘The soldier didn’t try to kill?’

‘No, no, Mr President, none of our soldiers would _try_ to kill.’

‘Then it isn’t the solider’s fault.’

‘Right. And if the soldiers were I don’t know, just shooting in the general direction of the enemy without trying in any way to make a kill shot, in fact, _trying_ not to, then any deaths that resulted would clearly be…’

‘Collateral damage,’ the President interjected quickly, ‘the American government has always accepted a degree of collateral damage, even friendly fire, as an inevitable part of warfare and necessary to the defence of the free world.’

The General nodded, ‘That’s what I thought. Very good, Mr President. Very good. I know what to do.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Five days until The Big One**

**On the street outside one of three Universal Device Cloud Centres in London**

Aziraphale frowned, ‘Crowley, can you explain it again?’

Crowley nodded quickly, ‘s simple. UDs store hardly anything on the device itself. ‘s all stored on the cloud. Even accesses the wider internet through the cloud server, right? So, take out the London UD cloud, everyone in London wakes up.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Right,’ he licked his lips and looked back at the building. It was grey and tall, the kind of building that in an old city like London, and in Aziraphale’s mind certainly, was classed as modern, although it had to have been built nearly one hundred years ago. It was also perfectly ordinary looking. It didn’t look, at all, like the kind of building that might house something as delicate as a cloud. Though, Aziraphale supposed, Heaven and Hell’s London entrances would look similarly ordinary to the humans who passed by. So perhaps that was the point. Aziraphale cleared his throat, ‘and they keep the cloud in that building?’

Crowley nodded, ‘Uh-huh, well actually it is kept across three buildings. They build in redundancy, you see, one goes down there’s two copies. It automatically swaps to one of the two backups. We’ll have to take out all three to bring it down. Even then, they’ll re-route it before too long, couple of days, maybe? The best we can do is buy Londoners some time and hope they make the best of it. Then I suppose we go from there.’

Crowley shrugged and looked across to Aziraphale, taking in his angel’s dazed eyes and lost expression. It suddenly hit Crowley what was going on in Aziraphale’s mind and he burst out laughing, ‘Angel, you- you- you- thought it was an actual cloud, didn’t you?’

Aziraphale’s eyes widened and a pink blush spread across his cheeks, ‘No. Maybe. I didn’t know what it was. I mean they call it a cloud! Is it really so far-fetched to believe that humans have found a way to store data in the sky?’ Aziraphale demanded hand pointing to the heavens.

Crowley couldn’t stop laughing. Aziraphale’s reaction only made it funnier. Crowley bent over, hands on knees as he guffawed with uncontrollable delight.

Aziraphale fussed with his jacket and bow tie, ‘Really, dear. It isn’t that funny.’

Crowley finally caught his breath enough to speak, ‘It is. It is. Best one yet, angel. Even better than when you said you couldn’t understand why Ada Lovelace was wasting her talents on Babbage’s ‘mechanical abacus’. Remember that? You called the analytical engine, the first computer, an abacus!’

Aziraphale grimaced, ‘No one understood that damned contraption at first.’

‘Yeah but you said that to Ada! Right to her face!’ Crowley said still laughing.

Aziraphale tutted, ‘She was more polite about it than you’re being. Perfectly amicable when we met again in our garden too. Didn’t even mention my little blunder. _Some_ people have the grace not to gloat. Anyway, if we are going to reminisce, I also remember when a certain demon didn’t understand why two unicorns were needed on the Ark.’

Crowley abruptly stopped laughing. ‘I told you,’ he hissed, ‘I knew what sex was. I just didn’t know Noah was breeding the animals. How was I supposed to know they were _breeding_ them?’

‘So you say,’ Aziraphale said with a little satisfied smile as he fussed about with his jacket.

‘Nah. Ah. Gah,’ Crowley spluttered, ‘Anyway, you need more than one breeding pair to maintain hardiness in the population. And there was no back up for disease or…or…’

‘Escapees?’

‘Right. And what were the animals supposed to eat? So it was a stupid plan. How was I to know it was a stupid plan? It shouldn’t have worked. Your lot had to perform miracles like crazy so it would work and that prick Gabriel could save face. You know it.’

Aziraphale tutted, ‘Not my lot anymore, dear. Can we get back to _our_ plan?’

Crowley sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, getting it together before answering, ‘Yes, yes, our plan. We need to take out the cloud servers,’ he paused and added pointing, ‘Which to be clear is a mass of computers in that building and not a cloud floating in the sky.’

Aziraphale rolled his eyes but apart from that he kept his frustration contained in the interests of getting on with things, ‘and how do we do that?’

‘Easy: we break the computers. The only tricky bit is getting into the building and that’s already been arranged. I called in a favour from some old friends,’ Crowley grinned, ‘here put this on,’ he continued materialising two high vis jackets, both black with orange high vis material on the shoulders.

‘Do I have to?’ Aziraphale said with a grimace.

‘Yes. We’re exterminators. Exterminators don’t dress like,’ Crowley waved his hand, ‘gay English literature professors who raided the BBC historical costume department.’

Aziraphale pouted, and smoothed out his jacket, ‘I have standards. I thought you’d learned to appreciate my style.’

Crowley sighed, pinching his nose in frustration. He quickly moved forward and kissed Aziraphale softly on the lips, ‘Ziraphale I _love_ you. And yes, I’m like those dogs with the bells that guy experimented on, you know the one with the name that sounds like that desert you like, the one from Australia with the fruit and the meringue.’

‘Pavlov? Anyway, it is from New Zealand.’

‘Maybe,’ Crowley said with a shrug, ‘Whatever. Thing is, I think tartan bow ties are ridiculous and I find you ridiculously sexy wearing one. And, believe me, no one should get turned on by a tartan bow tie. You’ve done that to me. I love your style on you because I love you.’

Aziraphale smiled coyly, his eyes darting away as a soft blush spread across his cheeks.

‘We’re good?’

Aziraphale nodded.

‘Right. You need to look like an exterminator. Put this on.’

Aziraphale nodded, appeased and pulled the jacket on, doing it up so it covered up his clothes, ‘Exterminators? We aren’t killing anything are we?’

‘Course not. The rats are on our side.’ Crowley said as he pulled his on jacket on. ‘Follow me.’

Crowley strode into the building and Aziraphale followed.

‘Oh thank goodness!’ the security officer cried out, as she strode over to them both, ‘please tell me you are the exterminators.’

‘We are the exterminators,’ Crowley said with a grin.

The security officer sighed, ‘what a relief. I’ve never seen a rat problem like this before. It is terrifying. Almost apocalyptic,’ she chuckled, ‘it would happen on my shift wouldn’t it?’

Aziraphale smiled warmly, ‘don’t you worry, dear, we’ve seen it all before. Prevented Armageddon itself. We’ll get it sorted.’

‘Wonderful. Now I’m meant to give you clearance for all three of our London offices. One of the technicians spotted some rats there too. You’ll need to come back here when you are done to check out. Your clearance expires at the end of the day regardless but if you don’t check out there will be questions, you understand.’

‘Perfectly,’ Crowley grinned.

‘Alright,’ the security officer said, ‘just through here.’

She led them into a small side room and got them to stand still while the building’s computerised security system scanned them, taking precise biometrics. Aziraphale and Crowley ensured that the biometrics would be plausible for what they appeared to be—two human males in their forties— and would link to verifiable identities now, identifies that would mysteriously disappear from the system later (because they had never existed to begin with).

The security guard slipped on her AR glasses and interacted with an AR interface for several minutes, frowning as she typed into air. She sighed and slipped off the glasses, ‘Alright, that’s it. You’re in. Any last questions.’

‘Yes,’ Crowley smiled, ‘Why don’t you have a little sleep?’

The security guard’s eyes fluttered and Aziraphale rushed forward and caught her, lowering her gently into a chair. Aziraphale brushed her hair back out of her face, ‘and while you sleep why don’t you dream of whatever makes you happy.’

‘C’mon, angel, we don’t have all day,’ Crowley muttered already half out of the room. Aziraphale had to run to catch up. He huffed and puffed behind Crowley as they stepped into the elevator and riding up to the next floor.

Aziraphale’s hands found each other, ‘Crowley, she isn’t going to get into trouble is she? She seemed awfully nice.’

Crowley shrugged, ‘Maybe. I wouldn’t worry. She’s a security guard, angel. Comes with the territory. Could come to be thought of as a hero even in the circumstances.’

Aziraphale bit his lip and a little worried crease divided his forehead. He sighed and looked over at Crowley, his eyes wide and distressed.

Crowley shook his head, ‘Fine. When this has blown over we’ll come back and you can miracle up something for her, okay? Make it up to her. Make sure she’s considered a hero. Feel better?’

Aziraphale nodded, smiling, ‘much. Thank-you, dear.’

The elevator dinged and they stepped out, confronted with row upon row of computers—naked racks of them with wires hanging out, little lights blinking —on tall black metal stands. The cool, crisp air buzzed with the hum of thousands upon thousands of little computer fans punctuated with the squeaking of dozens and dozens of rats.

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale exclaimed at the sight of the rats running up and down the aisles, ‘my word!’

‘Thank-you my friends! Your work is done. We’ll take over from here,’ Crowley said addressing the rats as faithful comrades.

The rats obediently scurried past Aziraphale and Crowley, making little squeaking noises as they went. As the last of the rats disappeared, Crowley clicked his fingers, and a large plastic gun coloured a lurid combination of yellow and orange and with two massive barrels appeared in his hands. He passed it along to Aziraphale, ‘It’ll miraculously refill.’

Aziraphale examined it confused while Crowley clicked his fingers again and another large plastic gun, exactly the same, appeared in his own hands.

‘Crowley,’ Aziraphale said with a frown, ‘what…’ his voice trailed off as he saw Crowley’s excited grin as he posed with his gun looking like the poster for one of those ridiculous action movies Crowley liked.

‘Thing ‘bout electronics, angel,’ Crowley drawled, ‘they have the same weakness as me. Well, almost. They’re a little more vulnerable, of course.’

Crowley winked and began to run up the first row of computers, his gun shooting a constant, steady stream of water, right into the heart of the electronics. Oh, thought Aziraphale, of course, water pistols. Well, they were technically water pistols, but Crowley’s little automatic replenishing miracle made them act more like powerful hoses. Aziraphale watched Crowley come to the end of the first row and fling himself around the corner, holding onto the shelving with one hand and shooting water into the ceiling with the other, his face bursting with a wide grin.

‘Oh, Good Lord,’ Aziraphale muttered. Crowley was not only over six thousand years old but also a member of a species that sprung into being fully formed and adult. Yet, he was still somehow, in his most basic essence, a child. Not just a child but the kind of child who causes their parents to both glow with pride and to fret with desperate worry. A clever and mischievous child. Aziraphale felt a peculiar kind of sympathy with those parents.

‘Wahoo!’ Crowley yelled as he swung around the next corner, ‘C’mon, angel, this is the fun bit!’

Aziraphale chuckled, shook his head, and joined in, striding up and down the aisles, soaking the computers as he went. It didn’t take long—and Crowley sure enjoyed every moment—before the whole place was soaked.

‘Right,’ Crowley said, miracling away the water pistols and striding back to the elevator, ‘we need to get to the other two locations and take out the back ups, and we need to do it quickly. Some technician somewhere will have received a notice that this centre is down already. When they arrive here and see the state of this place then they’ll really panic.’

Aziraphale nodded and hurried after him. In the Bentley, with Crowley’s driving, it was a quick trip to get to the second and then the third of the universal device cloud centres in London. They looked much the same as the first and proved similarly vulnerable to water. Aziraphale and Crowley could simply stride in and out of the buildings, the security systems for the second and the third buildings were biometric only and they already had clearance. The companies had only thought a human security guard necessary at their main building. After all, biometrics was so reliable.

They strode out of the third building, the final redundancy in the universal device system for the London area, unchallenged.

Crowley stopped a random young man on the street, ‘Hey, you. Take the Lord’s name in vain.’

The young man frowned, ‘Nah. Piss off.’

Crowley snorted and gave Aziraphale a glance, ‘probably a good sign but not proof.’

Aziraphale nodded thoughtfully.

‘Alright, everyone!’ Crowley announced loudly to the street, ‘is there someone here who will take the Lord’s name in vain for me.’

A middle-aged woman carrying a young child stopped, frowning at Crowley in confusion, ‘For God’s sake…’

‘That’s it! Well done! Keep it up!’ Crowley drawled with a finger point, already turning away from the woman and towards the Bentley.

‘Wait!’ the woman called out, ‘we couldn’t say that before, could we? Why couldn’t we say it? What happened?’

‘Ah, bright spark you. It’s the UDs. Spread the word, yeah?’ Crowley said as he and Aziraphale slipped into the Bentley. They were soon on the road speeding away back to their cottage.

‘Do you think the Londoners will make the most of this little reprieve?’ Aziraphale asked, a thread of anxiety in his voice.

Crowley took eyes off the road to look at Aziraphale carefully, taking in his worry, ‘Yeah, I do. Good at seizing opportunities, humans.’

Aziraphale nodded and settled in to watch London and then the English countryside speed by.

‘Never understood why Heaven didn’t use water pistols. You know, with holy water,’ Crowley said after awhile.

‘Oh!’ Aziraphale answered, his eyes wide with surprise as he turned to look at Crowley, ‘I suppose no one ever thought of it,’ he paused a moment considering the idea, ‘doesn’t really fit in with the gravity and majesty of the angelic, does it? I can’t imagine Gabriel would have supported it, if anyone had had the idea.’

Crowley snorted, ‘n that’s the problem with Heaven in a nutshell. Well, that’s two of the many, many problems.’

Aziraphale shivered, thinking of a water pistol of holy water being used on Crowley, ‘well, I for one am glad they lack the imagination necessary to come up with such an idea,’ he reached across and placed his hand tenderly on Crowley’s thigh.

Crowley smiled and took Aziraphale’s hand in his own, driving the car with one hand on the wheel.

‘Actually,’ Aziraphale said, a little wrinkle in his forehead, ‘you may not be vulnerable to holy water anymore.’

‘Huh,’ Crowley said, giving Aziraphale’s hand a squeeze, ‘or you to hellfire. Good point. Don’t fancy the idea of testing that out though.’

‘Hm, yes, perhaps not.’

The car lapsed back into silence as they held hands and watched the English countryside roll by. 


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Evie and Lil have put into action Evie's plan to fix the world: free will 2.0. Unfortunately, Evie has discovered that the rule about honouring your parents has sent Mia running back to her dangerous father. But surely the other rules work, right? 
> 
> Aziraphale and Crowley destroyed the London UD cloud and bought Londoners some time. Will they make the best of it?
> 
> Anathema has been acting strangely. Is she just back under the thumb of Agnes Nutter or is it something more?

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Four days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Morgan swallowed hard as she flicked down through her news feed, her UD screen unfolded and propped up on the coffee table. She’d been so preoccupied with her mother’s dramatic and disturbing changes that she hadn’t checked the news in days. But that had been a big mistake. A monumental mistake. Because whatever was happening with her mum wasn’t just happening to her mum and a moment of looking at the news made that clear. People all over the world were acting in strange and disturbing ways. It was happening to everyone. To everyone, it seemed, except for Morgan and her dad. Morgan tapped her thumb on her front teeth as she turned that fact over in her mind. It was happening to everyone, except herself and her dad...

Morgan flicked through the articles, taking in the words—shocking to read in black and white— and taking in the images— photographs that burned their way into Morgan’s mind. There had been a mass destruction of religious art that was now being attributed to mass hysteria, a worldwide ceasefire that had at first looked like the end of war but had morphed into a new kind of war with a dramatic increase in torture and ‘collateral damage’, a spate of confessions across all areas of politics and all nations, and a dramatic decrease in robbery. Morgan took in this wild kaleidoscope of news, her heart thumping in her chest. This was it. This was the prophecies. It was happening. It was happening _now_. And, somehow, her mum was caught up in it.

Morgan took a deep shuddering breath and then she scrolled through the news again, letting it all sink in piece by piece. Destruction of religious art. A ceasefire. Torture. Confessions. A decrease in robbery. Then Morgan’s mind turned to her own mum. Her mum had been acting in the most bizarre of ways. It was like she was being controlled by someone else. But also, kind of, not. It wasn’t like she was being controlled by someone else entirely. Morgan’s dad recognised much of it. It was like her mum was being controlled by someone who was almost herself, but not quite. And someone who was very rigidly keeping to a rule book. Morgan’s dad had put it down to Anathema being under the control of Agnes Nutter again. And Anathema was taking Agnes Nutter’s prophesies and her own duty as a descendent to solve them, much more seriously now, disturbingly so, in fact. Right now, it was like Anathema couldn’t decide on anything without Agnes Nutter telling her what to do. But that wasn’t the core of the problem, was it?

Morgan chewed her lip as she thought it through. Then, one of the prophesies came to her and she whispered it aloud to herself, ‘what was etched in stone will be set in stone...’ That was it, wasn’t it? That was the one.

Shaking, Morgan opened her website, and scrolled through it, finding the prophesy that she’d just repeated and examining the very latest comments on it. Sure enough, there were a couple of recent commenters thinking along similar lines to Morgan herself. They pointed out the similarities of the current wave of strange behaviour to the Ten Commandments. Yes, Morgan thought to herself, yes, that made sense. Everyone was being controlled, being forced to obey the Ten Commandments and… something else. But how? Morgan frowned and returned to the newsfeed, scrolling through the stories, the images. As the page refreshed, a new story came up. Morgan read it carefully.

The British Government were releasing a safety warning about universal devices. The article was very understated, very calm, clearly written by someone deliberately avoiding panicking anyone. But the government was clearly advising citizens to take their universal devices off and to minimise their use until the appropriate government departments could investigate the safety concerns further.

Morgan’s heart thudded in her chest. She looked down at her own universal device. She had her explanation: it was the UDs. That was why her mum was affected but Morgan and her dad were not. Her dad didn’t use a UD. It’d break the moment he put it on and Morgan’s, well, it would always continue to work exactly as Morgan herself expected. But, oh! Hadn’t hers seemed to break a few days ago? Hadn’t she felt herself unconsciously fix it? That must have been the moment when it had all happened! 

Another prophesy came to Morgan and she whispered that aloud too,

‘Spin, spin, spin

Threads of silk holde the worlde together

But silk can also make a nette

And there be a cob.’

Morgan closed her eyes and placed her hand onto her own UD. She concentrated, tuning in to the aura around it, seeing the pathways where it connected to the Cloud and through the Cloud, to the internet and to the rest of the digital world. Tuning in like this, she could see her own unconscious fix, like a little dam, blocking some of the input, stopping it from infiltrating Morgan’s own UD and corralling it off to the side where it fell and dissipated into the world. It was a very effective fix as far as Morgan’s own UD was concerned. But how could Morgan fix it for others? How could she fix what was happening for the whole world?

Every web has a spider. She needed to find the spider. So, Morgan did something she’d never done before, never known that she could do. She followed the aural pathway going out of her UD. It was a bit like astral projecting. At least, that’s how she would explain it to her mother later, she decided. Her physical body was still in the house, touching her UD. But some part of Morgan was able to follow the aural pathway, leading her to the local UD Cloud. From there she could see pathways twisting in and out, thousands and thousands of UDs. She wanted to get a bigger picture and, no sooner had she thought that, when suddenly she did.

Morgan could see it all: a web covering the planet—oh, with a little tear over London, that’s interesting— intricate and detailed and so achingly beautiful. And along the web pulsed information, data, and in that data was the Ten Commandments. No, that wasn’t right, not ten. Someone had been fixing their program, hadn’t they? An update to fix the initial bugs. But oh, the program was too flawed for that. The program was beautiful—Morgan could admire that even as she saw its flaws—but it didn’t meet user need. What the programmer had thought would be features were nothing but bugs. There were fundamental design flaws, fundamental and fatal design flaws. And it wasn’t just the Commandments. Oh, Morgan could see it now: great looping feedback loops, algorithms!

The entire web pulsed with deep machine learning, using all of the data, individual and group to predict each person’s response, to predict their _best_ response, and that was getting fed back into each person through their UD. Humanity had become enslaved by their own data. Morgan sighed. At once it was all so clear.

But wait, it was bigger than that still. In the web there was something older than the internet, something ancient. Morgan touched it, reaching out through the web, and she felt thousands of years worth of data ripple under her touch. Fascinating. Whose data was this? Who had collected this vast reservior of information and for what purpose? And, more importantly, where was the spider?

Morgan reached down through the tendrils of the web, feeling every ripple, every little movement in the interconnected flow of data. The program was flawed, fundamentally flawed. But, oh it was beautiful, the coding exquisite. She could feel evidence of the programmer everywhere in their design. But the programmer was not there. The spider had woven the web and abandoned it.

But if I don’t find the spider, Morgan thought, how will I fix this? And then it came to her, clear and perfect: she was the spider. She held the whole beautiful, glorious thing in her very grasp. She did not create it. But she could destroy it. And in one decisive moment, she broke it, scattering the program far and wide, flicking the Commandments off into nothingness, grinding the machine learning to a halt, disconnecting the web from the mysterious ancient data stream and leaving only the internet as it used to be. With one final act, she repaired the hole over London. And then she was catapulted back into her body where she collapsed, exhausted, on the living room floor.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Four days until The Big One**

**A flat in London**

Evie paced a hard line next to the couch, tears streaming down her cheeks, hands shaking, as Lil continued to frown over the newsfeed, UD screen unfolded and propped up on the coffee table for them both to read together.

‘That’s it!’ Evie said hoarsely through her tears, ‘it hasn’t worked. None of it has worked. If that rule doesn’t work, then none of them do!’

Lil stared blankly at the screen, still numb with the shock of it, ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, voice empty and numb, ‘How could they do this? There was a ceasefire. They can’t kill anyone. It should have been the end of war. But they’ve just re-started all the wars, all the terrorism with this flimsy collateral damage thing. According to this article more people died yesterday as ‘collateral damage’ than died the day before the ceasefire. And then there’s all this horrific torture happening. This is somehow worse. How can _do not kill_ make things worse?’

‘How can _do not kill_ make things worse? How can _honour your parents_ make things worse? How can a person’s own father be dangerous to her? How are we supposed to fix a world so fundamentally broken?’ Evie screamed, her face twisting with an ugly rage, ‘They are monsters! That’s the truth of it. They are absolute monsters! What happens in Hell is nothing compared to the horror that humanity brings upon itself. The Archangels and the Dark Council are right. Humanity is awful. You know how we fix the world? We rid it of humanity!’

Lil looked up to her sister, her own numbness receding, as she was filled with compassion for Evie’s pain. Poor Evie. She was still shaken to her core by the fact that her plan, her code, had sent Mia running dangerously into the arms of her father. Never mind that Evie and Lil had found out just in time, had rapidly corrected the living code, and found Mia, ensuring that her was alright and taking her safely back into her own flat. Never mind that Mia was, once again, perfectly safe. Evie had nearly hurt someone she cared about so very deeply. And she was furious with herself. That was the truth of it. Furious, but up until this moment, still desperately hoping that some part of her plan would be salvageable. After all, it was the only plan they had. But this, this showed that no part of Evie’s plan worked. If humanity could take _do not kill_ and twist it into a mess of torture and excuses about collateral damage, well, then Evie’s plan had just failed, hadn’t it? 

Lil sighed, ‘Evie, you don’t mean that.’

‘I do!’ Evie yelled viciously, pointing at the UD’s screen, ‘they are barbaric.’

‘Even Mia?’ Lil said softly, ‘Or what about Fiona and Glenn and all the other residents at The Orchard? Or Ethan? You’d destroy them too?’

Evie collapsed onto the couch, her anger instantly evaporating and only a deep sadness remaining, a deep and overhwelming ocean of sadness that threatened to pull her under. She buried her face in her hands and wept. Lil wound her arms around her sister and held on tightly, making gentle shushing noises and stroking her hair. Minutes passed punctuated only by the sounds of Evie’s sobbing. Eventually, her tears dried up. Her sorrow was endless but her ability to cry was not.

‘We need to remove all of it,’ Evie said softly, her breathing coming in heavy puffs, her mouth dry, ‘we need to remove all of it now. If that rule doesn’t work, then none of them do. I’ve failed.’

‘Yeah, I think we do,’ Lil said as she stood up, moving to the kitchen and fetching Evie a glass of water and a box of tissues. She handed them both to Evie without words.

Evie took them both with silent gratitude. She steadily drank the glass of water and used the tissues to dry her eyes.

‘If this isn’t the solution then I don’t know what is,’ Evie said, voice shaking.

Lil shook her head. Neither did she. She sighed, ‘Lets just fix this first. We’ll deal with that later,’ she said as she returned the glass to the kitchen sink and threw the tissues into the bin.

Evie nodded and clicked her fingers, disappearing the last remnants of her tears from her face, ‘Alright, let’s…’ but she didn’t get to finish her sentence. She didn’t get to propose the solution. Instead, she was forced to feel the protective web of rules in which she had encased humanity stretch and snap. The web broke, the Commandments and algorithyms disappeared and the internet and humanity were returned to being exactly as they were before.

Lil gasped, feeling it too, ‘what was that? Did you do that? I thought we were going to do it together, Evie.’

Evie shook her head quickly, eyes wide, ‘No. Not me.’

Lil frowned. Then she snorted, ‘well, that solves that, I suppose. But who? Who could have possibly done that but us?’

Evie silently reached out for Lil’s hand and Lil gave it. They closed their eyes and tuned into the great flow of data surrounding the planet together, confirming that their programming had all truly been undone, looking for remnants of the web and examining the evidence. Eventually, they shifted back to their flat.

‘A human,’ Lil said, ‘A human destroyed it.’

‘Definitely,’ Evie agreed, voice flat with shock.

‘I didn’t think they could do that,’ Lil said with a frown creasing her forehead.

‘I don’t think they normally can,’ Evie sighed, ‘must be someone special in some way. A witch, perhaps? Though I didn’t think witches were that powerful.’

‘Kinda restores a bit of your faith in humanity though, doesn’t it?’ Lil said with a grin, ‘I mean, they solved it for themselves, didn’t they?’

‘Perhaps,’ Evie said with some doubt, chewing her bottom lip.

‘So,’ Lil cleared her throat and shuffled a little from side to side anxiously, ‘what do we do next?’ Evie had come up with the last idea, so Lil felt a certain pressure to come up with the next one. But she had nothing.

Evie sighed. Her idea was a glorious failure and she didn’t have another one. If only God would reply, if only God would give them a sign. Evie licked her lips to reply to Lil but before she could even formulate a response let alone give it voice a figure appeared out of nowhere interrupting her thought and she shouted, ‘Jesus Christ!’

‘Is that an exclamation of surprise or a greeting?’ the gossamer figure of a ghostly Jesus Christ asked from across the room.

‘Holy fuck,’ Lil muttered, turning around to face the ghost.

Jesus laughed, ‘Now _that_ I hope is an exclamation of surprise,’ he floated over to the window and looked out wistfully, ‘so this is London. I do wish I had the time to explore a little, to see a few of the sights and meet the people,’ he sighed to himself, ghostly hand reaching out longingly towards the window, ‘Unfortunately, my visit will be brief. In fact, I’m likely to be pulled back quite suddenly I’m afraid.’

‘Thank-you for visiting us. I can’t tell you what an honour it is,’ Evie gasped breathlessly. This was it. This was God finally stepping in, in their hour of need, and giving them guidance, ‘do you have a message from the Almighty?’

Jesus shook his head, still scanning the London skyline, ‘I’m afraid not. I’ve been trying to visit for awhile, Eve and Lilith or do you prefer Evie and Lil?’ he turned away from the window to meet their gaze smiling at them warmly.

‘I’m pretty sure you can call us whatever you like,’ Lil said with wide eyes and a gulp. 

Jesus’s face fell a little. He regretted the distance that Lil had immediately placed between them. Distance. There was always distance. He’d hoped it would be different with Evie and Lil. But he forced himself to smile through his own disappointment. He wasn’t there for himself, ‘Evie and Lil it is then. Now, how are you both doing?’

Tears immediately welled in Evie’s eyes, ‘I’ve fucked it all up,’ she confessed in a rush, ‘I tried to re-create the world the Almighty intended, I really did. We tried to correct the world by building in core rules. We started with the Ten Commandments, added machine learning, tweaked the program wherever it didn’t work but it failed. All the rules failed. Even _do not kill_ failed. And now we don’t know what to do next.’

Evie’s tears overflowed and fell, running down her cheeks. Jesus floated forward. He reached out and wiped Evie’s tears away tenderly, his ghostly hands manifesting a physical-like presence just for that purpose. He smiled sadly and said with soft tenderness, ‘Not your fault, Evie. Not your fault at all. Rules are imperfect by nature. They always fail.’

‘They do?’ Evie sniffed, looking into Jesus’ kind eyes.

‘Oh yes. Did you read the _gospels_?’ Jesus said with a little sideways grin and a twinkle in his eye.

‘Yes, yes of course I did,’ Evie quickly explained wide-eyed, hands twisting in worry, ‘Multiple times, the canonical and the non-canonical…’

Jesus smiled, ‘No need to fret. I’m only joking. I know you did, and I wouldn’t care if you hadn’t. I haven’t finished the gospels myself truth be told, not even the four that made it into the Bible. There’s nothing worse then reading about yourself. They never get it quite right,’ Jesus frowned a little, lost in his own thoughts for a moment. Then he shook his head, ‘Anyway, the point is: rules can be useful as, well, guidelines I suppose. But ultimately, they are imperfect. And they especially cause problems if you hold them too tightly.’

‘Don’t you need rules to keep the darker side of humanity in check?’ Lil asked, head flicked to one side.

Jesus nodded, ‘To some extent, yes. With children, for example, and you do need laws in society because, well, not everyone truly understands. But ultimately? All rules fail. All rules are imperfect. And if you truly understand then they simply aren’t needed.’

‘If you truly understand what?’ Evie said, chewing on her lip.

Jesus smiled tenderly as his gaze flicked back to her, ‘Love, Evie, if you truly understand _love_.’

Lil and Evie stared; their faces twisted in confusion.

Jesus shook his head and tried to explain, ‘Look at you two. You are perfect examples. Roll in the filth of the world, that was your assignment. And you tried, didn’t you? Broke some of the rules that the Archangels had taught you: eating for pleasure, drinking alcohol to excess, fornication. And yet here you are pristine. Why is that?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Evie said shaking her head.

‘And you never knowingly hurt anyone. You didn’t murder or torture or molest anyone. Why I don’t even think you experimented with more ordinary forms of cruelty,’ Jesus continued, ‘It didn’t even occur to you. Why is that?’

‘We did horrific damage trying to fix the world. All the people tortured, the religious art destroyed…’ Evie argued back, ‘That’s all my fault!’

‘The lives saved, the robberies that didn’t happen, the confessions made…’ Jesus shrugged, ‘the rules failed. As they always do. You did your best with good intentions. Remember all that has been done in my name: the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the televangelism, the misogyny and homophobia, trust me, if we are to be judged by our unintentional effects on the world then my record is far worse.’

Evie chewed at her lip, ‘I still don’t understand. How are we pristine?’

Jesus sighed, ‘You don’t need rules, Evie. You need to let yourself be guided by love. Love will steer you right.’ 

‘What about God? I have been praying the whole time we’ve been down here, but the Almighty has never answered. Why doesn’t she answer?’ Evie said.

‘Hasn’t she?’ Jesus laughed a melodic chuckle, ‘Oh, Evie, you know God is not in Heaven. You spent half your childhood there. Why do you look for answers in an empty sky?’

Fear washed over Evie, a cold fear chilling her to the bone. She choked, ‘So, what, she’s gone then? She’s deserted her creation?’

Jesus shook his head and smiled, softly, kindly, ‘Evie, the Kingdom of God is _in you_ ,’ and with those final words the spirit of Jesus Christ flickered and was gone.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Four days until The Big One**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale and Crowley sat on their couch, Aziraphale primly and Crowly sprawled, watching the news footage on their television with the sound turned down low. The glass doors to the garden were open and every so often Arthur would pop by either to give an update or to receive one.

‘Perhaps we should do something more now,’ Aziraphale said, his hands fidgeting in his lap.

Crowley frowned beside him, eyes still on the television, ‘Not yet. They’ve made an announcement about the UDs. The humans are doing something. Give them a chance.’

Aziraphale frowned and fidgeted some more.

Crowley sighed, ‘you gotta give ‘em a chance, angel.’

‘But Crowley,’ Aziraphale whined, turning to Crowley wide-eyed.

‘Argh,’ Crowley groaned covering his eyes, hands over his sunglasses and turning away, ‘don’t give me that look. You know I can’t resist that look.’

‘Yes, I do know. That’s why it is so useful,’ Aziraphale replied earnestly, eyes still wide and pleading.

‘Look, I really think they are figuring it out. If we act too soon, we could do more harm than good. Just, lets give them until lunch, alright? Now stop looking at me like that.’

Aziraphale turned back to the television with a satisfied grin, ‘Thank you, dear.’

‘Ngh.’

After a few minutes, Aziraphale turned to Crowley again, ‘you know, there’s one thing I don’t understand. How were you affected as you were by the algorithms? I mean if it is all in the internet. I know we weren’t fully together when the internet was invented or even when you first got the internet yourself, but you’ve spent longer on the internet since we’ve been together than before, haven’t you? Why did you get drawn into the past so? Why did you forget that we were together?’

Crowley chewed at his lip, ‘I wondered that too. I think the Earth Observation Files were hooked into it somehow.’

Aziraphale frowned as he considered this, a crease appearing across his forehead, ‘How?’

Crowley shrugged, ‘Dunno. But it certainly felt like 6000 years of history pressing down upon me,’ he shuddered.

‘Oh, Crowley,’ Aziraphale sighed, concern marking his features.

Crowley grimaced and shook his head sharply, signalling that he didn’t want to get into it right now, ‘thing is, if the Earth Observation Files were involved that means Heaven and Hell were involved in the whole thing too. All part of this New Alliance business, all part of the war on humanity.’

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip, ‘well, that’s certainly what the prophesies indicate. At least, what I’ve been able to make out. And, to be honest, the whole thing sounds like the kind of thing Gabriel would do,’ he paused a moment before adding with a tremour of worry, ‘what do you think they’ll try next?’

Crowley shrugged and shook his head, ‘Dunno. You’re the one who can work out the prophesies. But it’ll culminate in a full-scale war. Always bloody does.’

Aziraphale sighed, wringing his hands furiously.

Crowley leaned forward, putting his hands on top of Aziraphale’s and stilling them. He licked his lips and said with quiet tenderness, ‘we’ll figure it out, yeah?’

Aziraphale nodded, making eye contact with Crowley’s golden eyes through his sunglasses.

The spirit of Arthur appeared at the open glass door interupting the moment, ‘Good news! Those of us who are visiting family and friends are reporting that it is lifting. People appear to be acting normally again. We are getting positive reports from all over the world. Too early to be certain, but I think we may be in the clear.’

‘Oh, what a relief,’ Aziraphale sighed, his hand fluttering against his chest, ‘thank-you for letting us know straight away, Arthur.’

Arthur nodded, bowed and floated away.

‘Well, I am going to put the kettle on,’ Aziraphale announced getting up from the couch with a little happy wiggle.

‘I told you they’d sort it out, didn’t I tell you?’ Crowley drawled as he followed Aziraphale into the kitchen, leaning up against the bench as Aziraphale fussed about with the kettle.

‘Yes, yes, quite right, dear,’ Aziraphale agreed, ‘are you joining me for tea?’

‘Yeah, alright,’ Crowley shrugged.

‘Hm,’ Aziraphale muttered to himself as he warmed the teapot and spooned the tea leaves in, ‘one for you, one for me and one for the pot.’

Aziraphale turned back to Crowley, as they waited for the kettle to boil, ‘you know, dear, now that that’s all settled, there is a topic I would like to raise with you, a rather delicate topic about, well, about us.’

Crowley stilled. He swallowed hard. His behaviour under the control of the UD had been revealing. He knew that. He had even known that, on some level, while it was happening. But over the past thirty years, since Armageddon, he had been open with Aziraphale. As mortifying as it had been to have his old feelings ripped out of his past and laid bare in his present, he’d shared it all with Aziraphale before. Unless he hadn’t? Unless there was something that he hadn’t known to tell Aziraphale that had now been revealed? Some horrific, mortifying secret that he himself hadn’t even recognised but Aziraphale with his quick, clever mind had unearthed? His heart beat fast in his chest. For the first time in a long time he was grateful to be wearing his sunglasses—put on when they opened the glass doors for easy communication with Arthur and the garden— with _Aziraphale_. With faux calm and cool he drawled, ‘Go on, out with it. Don’t leave me in suspense.’

Aziraphale looked directly into Crowley’s eyes, staring deep into the sunglasses to make contact and said, ‘How long have you been turned on by tartan bow ties?’

Crowley snorted. He attempted to glare at Aziraphale, but a smile kept breaking through. Eventually, he shook his head trying to cover his smile with his hands.

Aziraphale grinned back smugly, ‘and exactly how arousing do you find them? On a scale of one to ten? Is it just my tartan or is it tartan in general?’

‘I hate you,’ Crowley attempted to growl menacingly but his voice brimmed with affection and humour, ‘You bastard. You set me up. I hate you so much.’

Aziraphale grinned. He reached out and squeezed Crowley’s hand, ‘Oh no, dear. You _love_ me. So much you’ve developed a little tartan bow tie fetish it seems.’

‘It’s not a fetish. You know that’s not what I meant,’ Crowley said, spreading his arms wide in defence.

Aziraphale just grinned back meaningfully.

‘Aziraphale! It’s not a fetish!’ Crowley growled.

‘Whatever you say, dear,’ Aziraphale said as he poured the water into the teapot. While waiting for the tea to brew he made a point of very carefully straightening out his bow tie, his nimble fingers stroking each part of the material perfectly into place, caressing the bow tie back into shape.

‘Stop that!’ Crowley yelled, batting Aziraphale’s hands away.

‘Stop what, dear?’ Aziraphale said all innocent wide eyes.

‘Argh!’ Crowley cried out, leaning back into the bench dramatically, ‘why do I put up with you?’

‘For my tartan bow ties apparently,’ Aziraphale answered smoothly, opening a packet of biscuits.

Crowley laughed despite himself.

‘You must permit me a degree of smugness,’ Aziraphale said, ‘It has taken me a long time to get you to admit that tartan is stylish.’

Crowley raised an eyebrow and started carrying the teacups over to the table, ‘that isn’t _at all_ what happened, angel.’

Aziraphale followed with the teapot and the biscuits.

‘Sexy then,’ Aziraphale said with a smile.

Crowley went back for the milk jug. He sat it down on the table rather forcefully, the milk sloshing about in the jug. As he fell into a chair he muttered, ‘you are insufferable.’

Aziraphale chuckled as he poured the tea.


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Morgan destroyed free will 2.0, tearing the web of control apart and collapsing onto the floor.
> 
> Evie and Lil were visited by Jesus. He said to be guided by love. 
> 
> Aziraphale and Crowley were relieved to find that the humans, given a little opportunity, fixed the UD problem.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Three days until The Big One**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Newton and Anathema sat in the living room together, cuddled up on the sofa in the kind of comfortable silence that only happily married couples and old best friends manage to obtain. Their worry for their daughter creased their foreheads and Newt stroked Anathema’s arm tenderly, trying to calm his wife’s anxieties even as his own mind swirled with the very same concerns. 

It had been Newton who had found Morgan the previous day, collapsed on the living room floor unconscious. But Anathema had come quickly, had come running to Newton’s shouts and had found every parent’s worst nightmare.

‘She’s really sleeping in,’ Anathema said, her fingers drumming out a little pattern on her leg, ‘after all that sleep yesterday afternoon, too.’

Newton’s eyes flicked to the clock, ‘Maybe we should have taken her to the hospital. Just in case.’

Anathema shook her head, ‘It isn’t a physical injury. It is a metaphysical one. What would the doctors do? Run a bunch of tests all of which would find nothing. We did the right thing. What she needs is rest.’

Newton chewed his bottom lip, giving this some thought. Finally, he nodded, ‘Good thing she’s sleeping in then, I suppose.’

Anathema sighed, ‘Yeah, maybe you’re right. She’s instinctively doing what she needs,’ she paused for a beat and added, with the air of someone repeating something yet again, because they themselves need to hear it, ‘She’ll be fine. Just needs rest.’

Newton nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose from where they had slipped down.

Anathema smiled warmly as she remembered her daughter's actions proudly. She still didn’t fully understand what Morgan had done or how. But Morgan had been able to explain something of her experiences yesterday and it was clear that Morgan had saved the day, ‘Proud of her, though.’

Newton’s face lit up as it always did when he talked about Morgan, ‘Oh yeah. She saved the world. Our little girl saved the world!’ Newton paused a moment basking in the pride. Then he looked at Anathema carefully, taking in her state, ‘how do you feel though? I mean I haven’t asked about that yet. Being affected by your UD. That must have been, well, strange.’

Anathema snorted, ‘Being controlled? Doing what someone else wants me to do without a moment’s thought for what I want? Not so very strange for me.’

Newton frowned, ‘Anathema, my love,’ he reached forward and took her hand. He squeezed it lovingly and whispered, ‘not your fault.’

Anathema blinked back tears that threatened to escape and squeezed Newton’s hand in return. She nodded, ‘Alright. Alright. Not my fault,’ she sighed, ‘I just wish I’d have been strong enough. You know, to fight it. After all these years, I’m still not strong enough.’

‘Hey,’ Newton said pushing his glasses back up his nose and shaking his head, ‘No, Anathema, no. Don’t think that. It isn’t the same thing at all. We’ve been working on the prophesies together and you haven’t slipped. You haven’t slipped one bit. That’s how strong you are. The whole controlling everyone through the web via the UDs thing was decidedly supernatural from how Morgan explained it.’

Anathema nodded and smiled wetly, ‘Yeah, I suppose. That makes sense.’

Newton grinned, ‘and think of it like this: you and I raised the one person on the planet who did resist it, who was actually able to fix it for everyone. How awesome are we?’

Anathema chuckled. ‘I’m not sure we’re supposed to be bathing in our daughter’s reflected glory, dear.’

‘Well, I’m going to,’ Newton replied, with a little sideways grin, ‘Only glory I’m ever going to get.’

Anathema shook her head in amusement, ‘Enough with the self-depreciating humour. You did, as I recall, put a stop to World War Three.’

Newton smiled warmly, ‘Well, if you want to keep giving me credit for that, I’m not going to stop you.’

They both looked up as they heard footsteps coming down the hallway. Morgan, still in her pajamas, stepped into the living room and yawned.

‘How are you feeling?’ Anathema asked, quickly swooping over, putting a hand to her forehead to check for a fever and giving her a quick motherly once over with her eyes.

‘Fine,’ Morgan said with shrug, ‘Normal self. Just a bit tired still. But not like yesterday.’

‘Good,’ Anathema said with a grin, ‘A restful day today, I think, and you’ll be as good as new.’

‘I’ll put on the kettle,’ Newton said, jumping up and beginning to walk towards the kitchen, ‘Make you a nice pot of tea. That’ll help.’

‘Thanks, dad,’ Morgan replied with a smile as she settled down on the sofa beside her mum, taking Newton’s place.

Anathema chuckled, ‘You know, black tea doesn’t have the general miraculous healing properties you think it does.’

Newton tutted and shook his finger at her, ‘you have your witchcraft, my dear, and I have mine.’

Morgan giggled.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Three days until The Big One, morning**

**St James Park, London**

In spite of everything, in spite of all that she and her sister had been through, in spite of the fact that they still had no plan, Lil smiled to herself as she entered St James Park.

The world seemed counting down around them, counting down to Lil and Evie’s final hour. One failed plan discarded and things were only more desperate. But Lil and Evie remained at a loss. They had no plan, no new ideas. All they had was the cryptic advice of Jesus Christ: to be guided by _love_. They had no idea how to translate that into any form of action, not really. They’d spent a whole evening pondering love but it led to no answers. And so they did the only thing they could do. They let themselves be guided by love and hoped that inspiration would come.

The world seemed to be was counting down around them. And their plans? Lil would wash dogs with Ethan. Evie would meet Mia at The Orchard to support her in getting her job back, and they’d all meet in St James Park, finding someplace nearby for a nice lunch. It wasn’t the kind of day one expected to have, knowing you were living the precipice of destruction. But it was the day that love was leading them too and they had to hope that that would prove enough. They had to hope that if they followed their hearts as Jesus had suggested that inspiration would come after all.

Ethan lit up when he saw Lil, greeting her with a soft but lingering kiss. He looked Lil up and down, ‘you alright?’

Lil nodded reflexively, then, more honestly, she shrugged.

Ethan chewed on his lower lip, ‘You under pressure to do that mission thing you were talking about?’

‘Kinda. It’s alright. We’re handling it,’ Lil replied.

Ethan wrapped his arms around Lil, kissing her cheek and softly stroking her raven-black hair. ‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘Let me help.’

Lil sighed and shook her head, ‘You can’t, Ethan. It isn’t anything you can help us with.’

‘Try me,’ Ethan persisted.

Lil shook her head, ‘I don’t want you to get hurt.’

Ethan sighed, ‘you’re damned stubborn you know that.’

A walk-in, a young boy with a little yappy terrier, arrived and saved Lil from needing to come up with a reply. They were soon caught up in a busy shift, washing dogs and collecting the regulars from their homes. But the subject wasn’t dropped for Ethan. He’d been thinking about Lil, going over everything she had said, piecing things together and doing his own research. He had an idea about what was going on with Lil and he wanted to confirm it. He wanted some answers. Well, not answers, exactly. Ethan wanted to find a way to help.

Towards the end of the shift, putting one of the more placid regulars into the dog washing machine together, Ethan decided to approach the topic from a different angle, ‘were you affected by all the weird stuff that happened lately? They’re saying it was caused by mass hysteria. Apparently, something similar happened like thirty years ago or something.’

‘Hm?’ Lil muttered looking away, focusing on encouraging the dog into the machine, ‘Dunno. I don’t really know what you mean.’

‘Don’t you?’ Ethan continued, eyes narrowing as he focused on Lil’s suspicious reaction, ‘because I was thinking, I’m not sure I believe the mass hysteria thing. Everyone obeying the Ten Commandments? To me, the whole thing seems like the sort of thing some kind of extremist religious group would do, you know, a cult or something and I was wondering…’

‘Please don’t ask,’ Lil said, closing her eyes tightly, ‘I don’t want to lie to you and I can’t tell you. There’s nothing I could say that you would understand.’

Ethan frowned and sighed in frustration, ‘well, I suppose that is an answer in a way. I don’t mean to pry, Lil, I just want to help.’

‘I know. Just be here for me. Be you. That’s all you can do,’ Lil said.

‘Alright,’ Ethan sighed. All the advice he’d been able to find about getting people out of cults had said to take it slowly, not to push too hard or the person could end up just shutting you down and running back to the cult. He’d have to be patient. At least he’d confirmed his suspicion that the mass hysteria was related in some way to whatever cult Lil had been raised in. He wondered which cult it was. Was it one that had been in the news before? Or one no-one had heard of yet? One thing Ethan was certain of, the cult must be powerful.

‘The last one’s Molly. Mind if I take her? I need a walk,’ Lil said with a frown. She was desperate for a moment alone.

‘Oh, sure. Take the best, why don’t you,’ Ethan joked halfheartedly.

Lil smiled and walked away. She felt on edge, her whole self taut with warring instincts. On the one hand, she longed to confess all to Ethan, to let him in, to let him help. Realistically, there was nothing he could do. And yet, it would be such a relief even to just ask for help, to face it all with Ethan. On the other hand, she absolutely could not leave Ethan in the line of fire. The Archangels and the Dark Council did not know about Ethan. Lil needed to keep it that way. When Heaven and Hell came for her and Evie, Lil needed to know that Ethan was here, in St James Park, surrounded by his dogs, safe and happy.

Ethan watched Lil go for a minute. Then he sat down on the grass with a heavy sigh. Ethan hoped that he hadn’t pushed Lil too far. All the information he’d been able to find said not to push too hard. But there was that mission Lil had spoken of. And she only had so long before her cult would come and sweep her back up again. Maybe he should push harder? It was so difficult to know what to do. Ethan’s head began to pound with the worry of it. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples, trying to soothe the pain, but try as he might the pain only increased.

When Lil returned with Molly she found Ethan still lying on the grass, massaging his head, clearly in pain. She frowned, ‘you alright?’

Before Ethan could reply Molly ran over to him and began to bark loudly. The noise pierced right through Ethan’s head like a knife. His stomach churned.

‘Shut up, Mol,’ Ethan said, batting her away, ‘I have a headache. I think it might be a migraine, actually. I’ve never had one before but I’m seeing little lights. Sparkling things. That’s a migraine thing, huh?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lil said. She’d heard of headaches but never this migraine thing.

Molly kept barking.

‘Argh, Molly, I have a headache. Please shut up,’ Ethan said, clutching at his head.

‘What can I do?’ Lil asked chewing on her lip, feeling utterly helpless.

‘Um, maybe finish the shift for me and I’ll go home, take all the painkillers I can and sleep it off?’ Ethan said, still clutching at his head. He tried to stand but he was unsteady on his feet. He stood strangely, unbalanced. It took Lil a moment to register what was strange about it but then she did. He was leaning to the left.

Lil felt a slow trickle of fear. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all. This wasn’t a headache. This was something bad. Molly went wild, as if she agreed with Lil, barking loudly, looking directly at Ethan as Ethan tried to walk. Ethan stumbled forward, still leaning to the left but he soon overbalanced, tipping too far and collapsing back onto the grass with a dull thud.

‘Ethan!’ Lil cried out, rushing to his side, kneeling down before him. Ethan looked back at Lil, disorientated and scared. He tried to speak but he could only make a strange gurgling noise. Lil clutched at his hand, ‘Ethan! Ethan!’

Suddenly, Evie and Mia were there too. Lil could hear Mia explaining to Evie that they needed to ring an ambulance and Lil was filled with gratitude. Someone was here who knew what to do. Lil could hear Mia making the call on her UD. Lil clutched onto Ethan’s hand tightly, every instinct within telling her not to let go. 

Time ground to a halt. At first Lil thought it was shock. Time had seemed to slow down ever since Ethan had collapsed. But then she realised that time really had stopped. It was Evie. Evie had stopped time around them. Lil clutched all the harder at Ethan’s hand.

‘Lil,’ Evie whispered, shaking her sister’s shoulder. Lil looked up to see Evie pointing across the park to a strange figure in dark robes under a nearby tree. Neither Evie nor Lil had ever met them before. But they were instantly recognisable. Lil’s stomach turned to water. No. No. No. No. _No_. The figure stared back for a beat. Then they slowly moved forward.

‘HELLO EVE. HELLO LILITH.’

‘No!’ Lil shouted, letting go of Ethan’s hand to stand and face Death, ‘you can’t have him.’

‘IT IS IN YOUR POWER TO BUY HIM SOME TIME,’ Death replied matter-of-factly, ‘LETS SEE IF YOU CAN.’

Lil turned back to Ethan, face twisted with desperation. Evie grasped her hand, ‘It’s alright, Lil. Let’s do it together. We’ll figure it out together.’

Evie guided Lil’s hand to rest on Ethan’s head. Together, they tuned into their powers, Evie taking the lead given Lil’s distress, exploring and gently probing to find out what had gone wrong.

Eventually, they found the source of the stroke: a ruptured blood vessel. With a miracle, they restored the vessel’s wall, mopped away the leaked blood and healed the damaged tissue. Ethan would live. 

Evie and Lil slowly and carefully withdrew their powers from Ethan’s body. Lil choked back tears. Ethan would live. He would live. They had thought the world had been counting down their own destruction, and it was, but they hadn’t known that the world had also been counting down Ethan’s. He had been living all his life with a ticking time bomb in his head. He had been born marked for death.

‘He’ll be okay,’ Evie whispered tenderly, stroking her sister’s hair, ‘we fixed him, Lil. He will be okay.’

‘HE WILL LIVE FOR NOW,’ Death confirmed, now standing directly behind them.

Lil stood again, facing Death. She’d won the fight. Ethan would live. But she didn’t look like someone who had won. Her face twisted with the pain and fury of someone who had only just tasted their first taste of loss and found it a bitter flavour indeed, ‘You can’t have him! You can’t _ever_ have him!’

‘I TAKE EVERYONE IN THE END,’ Death said calmly, ‘EVEN YOU.’

And Lil saw it, as clear as anything. She had spared Ethan today, but ultimately she could not save him. Any day, at any point Death could return and sweep him away and Lil could not stop it. Lil’s heart, so full of love for Ethan, cracked and burst open. She could not bear it. She could not endure it. Everyone born was destined to fall into Death’s clutches. Not just Ethan. Every one was born marked for death. Life was brief and it was cruel and filled with loss. It was grotesque.

Of course, Lil’s sharp mind ticked over. This was the fault. This was where it all went wrong. Well, no more. Evie and Lil were tasked with putting the world right and she would put it right. Lil’s power pulsed and grew, her eyes lighting up, burning with the fires of creation, and a blazing halo appearing around her head.

‘Not anymore,’ Lil said decisively and with a flick of her hand, Death was gone, closed off from the world, entrapped somewhere in the nothingness that was beyond and behind everything that was, trapped forever in the great darkness they had been since before the Beginning, since before creation.

‘Oh, Lil,’ Evie whispered, shaking with the shock of it even as her own halo blazed, lit up in response to the wave of Lil’s power remaking the world, ‘what have you done?’

‘What love told me to do,’ Lil said with a determined smile, her halo still blazing around her head, a ring of fire and light. She knelt before Ethan and clicked her fingers restarting time. Lil cupped his face and kissed his forehead gently. She was vaguely aware of her sister behind her, bent down on her knees, head lowered, earnestly whispering a prayer. In the background, sirens called.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Three days until The Big One, afternoon**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Crowley inspected the rose bushes with a careful, skilled eye, attuned to the minutae of bontanical flaws. He spotted one more branch to prune and he cut it with a definite snip. He nodded to himself, satisfied. With a click of his fingers, he miracled away the pruned branches. He wiped his hands on his gardening apron and miracled both his apron and his pruning shears back into the shed with another click.

Crowley surveyed his garden— from the roses at one end to the lavender at the other, the Oak and Elm in the distance, the masses of flowers, with just the right amount of grasses for texture, the perfect patch of lawn, just right for putting down a picnic blanket and lazing on and the apple tree in its central position, tall and strong and heavy with red fruit. Crowley smiled. Perfect. Even the masses of human souls, glinting in the orange glow of late-afternoon sunlight only added to the garden’s beauty. Like so many things, they weren’t so bad once you got used to them.

‘Old friend?’ a ghostly voice whispered near him.

Ah. And there were perks, of course.

‘Ciao,’ Crowley grinned.

‘Crowley, Arthur is wanting to speak to you and Aziraphale as soon as possible,’ DaVinci said.

Crowley sighed. Business then. With smooth practised skill he undid the hair tie keeping his hair in a tight bun, letting the crimson locks fall back down, framing his head. He ran his fingers through them, smoothing his hair out.

‘Any idea what he wants?’ Crowley drawled.

‘Yes,’ DaVinci said, with a little nod.

‘And?’ Crowley asked, arms outstretched, waiting for an answer.

‘Well, there haven’t been any new arrivals for awhile.’

‘Aha,’ Crowley frowned, pondering this, ‘bit odd,’ he shrugged, ‘but these things do fluctuate.’

‘Yes, naturally,’ DaVinci replied, ‘however, we haven’t troubled you with it too quickly. At this stage it is quite the anomaly and none of us can come up with a plausible explanation. We’d greatly appreciate both your and Aziraphale’s thoughts.’

‘Alright,’ Crowley nodded, if Leonardo couldn’t think of explanation then something really strange was happening, ‘I’ll get him and meet you at the door, yeah?’

As Crowley began to walk back to the cottage he realised with a sudden shock that this could mean that Heaven and Hell were onto them. Just as he’d formed that terrifying thought, a cry from Aziraphale pierced the air, seemingly confirming the worst, ‘Crowley!’

In an instant, Crowley was running to the cottage, the terror in Aziraphale’s cries driving him forward at an impossible speed, his wings automatically readying in the ethereal plane to be fully manifested if needed. He found Aziraphale in a moment, standing in the living room, twisting his hands, one around the other and again, staring transfixed at the television.

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale with one hand, scanning the room for threats as he hissed, ‘what isss it? Where isss it?’

Aziraphale threw his arms around Crowley, burying his face deep into Crowley’s chest and began to sob great heaving cries. Crowley sighed in relief, in spite of Aziraphale’s distress, at least Aziraphale was safe. His heart slowed back from its frantic pace and his wings settled back against his back. Crowley put his own relief at Aziraphale’s safety aside and focused on comforting Aziraphale in midst of the unfolding distress in front of him.

‘S’alright. ‘M here now,’ Crowley whispered, brushing his hands through Aziraphale’s white-blonde hair.

‘Oh, Crowley, they’ve deserted them,’ Aziraphale choked out between sobs.

‘There, there, now, angel. Who’s deserted who?’ Crowley whispered with deliberate tenderness.

‘Death has deserted humanity,’ Aziraphale choked out, ‘Azrael has left their post. Death has gone AWOL.’

‘What?!’

Aziraphale pointed a shaking finger at the television, ‘they keep playing the same images, oh it’s horrid, Crowley, it’s horrid.’

Crowley looked at the television. A continuous loop of text scrolled across the bottom of the screen announcing, ‘Last known death occurred today at 12:33pm London time. Scientists and medical doctors are baffled.’

The news was… Well, it was difficult to fathom. Crowley frowned as he tried to understand what it really meant. But then Crowley began to process the footage.

A young man in a hospital bed, body bandaged head to foot. Burns, the doctor was saying with tears in her eyes. Should be dead. The bandaged man took shallow shuddering breaths of agony. A cat with half its body squashed, mangled and bloody, meowing in clear pain, begging for relief. An elderly woman, clearly in the final stages of dying, mouth hanging open, breathing a death rattle, family waiting around saying final goodbyes for a departure that might never come. And the true horror of it began to dawn.

Crowley was a demon. He knew the torments of Hell itself. He had also lived for 6000 years. He had seen carts filled to overflowing with victims of the Black Death, he had seen the horror of the Spanish Inquisition and had lived through more wars than he could recall. And this still turned his stomach.

Crowley made little shushing noises as he caressed Aziraphale, as much for himself as for him.

Tap tap.

Tap tap.

Crowley slowly became aware that Arthur was tapping politely on the open glass door, trying to gain their attention. He clicked his fingers, turning the television to point towards where Arthur was floating, a group of spirits clustered behind him.

‘No one‘s dying anymore,’ Crowley explained, his mouth dry, ‘that’s why there’s been no new arrivals.’

Crowley clicked his fingers again, giving the television sufficient volume to be heard in the garden. Arthur and the spirits closest to the door quickly took in the horror, spreading the key information back, through their ranks. The spirits behind Arthur shuffled and reordered, those with any expertise that might be relevant floating forward, to hover behind Arthur and to see the news footage for themselves.

Crowley miracled their couch closer to the door, so they might continue to watch the news footage from the couch and talk to the souls in the garden. Crowley carefully shuffled Aziraphale over to the couch, ‘I’ve got you. We’ll figure this out,’ he whispered, planting a tender kiss on Aziraphale’s head. Sitting together on the couch, Aziraphale dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and dried his eyes.

‘You alright?’ Crowley whispered.

‘ _I’m_ alright. It is all those people and animals suffering desperately,’ Aziraphale countered with bite, his eyes flicking back to the television.

Crowley sighed, ‘Aziraphale,’ he whispered, his finger on Aziraphale’s chin, guiding his gaze back to meet Crowley’s own, ‘ _angel_ , are _you_ alright?’

Aziraphale sighed his hands fidgeting, ‘No, not really.’

‘Do you need…?’

‘No. I need to fix this. Can we do that?’ Aziraphale said, calmer this time.

‘Course,’ Crowley replied, taking Aziraphale’s hand and interlocking their fingers.

Aziraphale smiled and mouthed thank you as they both became aware of the conversation of the spirits, buzzing in the garden.

‘Is the phenomenon restricted to multicellular organisms? That’s the key question I want to see addressed,’ one spirit was saying.

‘But that’d be horrific!’ another spirit replied as a chorus of ghostly voices agreed.

‘Why aren’t they reporting this stuff? It isn’t all people and kittens.’

‘Give them a chance. They’ve go to run the tests before they talk to the journalists about this stuff, haven’t they? I’m quite certain my lab is running the experiments as we speak.’

‘It’ll show up in the medical system too. Antibiotics will stop working for a start. People mightn’t die but they’d get sicker,’ another ghostly voice jumped in.

‘Antibiotics stop working? The _immune_ _system_ will stop working. The entire population would be immunocompromised, but like, absolutely.’

‘Wouldn’t it depend somewhat on whether or not, for multicellular organisms, the phenomenon is restricted to the whole organism or is occurring at the level of individual cells as well?’ Another spirit piped up, ‘if pathogens can’t die but the individual cells of humans can’t die either, it’d be a kind of stale-mate, yes? What would that even look like at a whole organism level? Would people get sicker?’

‘Well, then we’d have a whole other problem on our hands, wouldn’t we?’

‘Quite right. Well, that’d be horrific too,’ the spirit answered.

‘Precisely.’

‘You are all too focused on humans,’ a new ghostly voice contributed, ‘what I want to know is: does it extend to plants and fungi? And what is going to become of the food chain?’

‘Oh, the food chain! But what could that even be if nothing can die?’

‘Exactly.’ 

Arthur made a noise like clearing his throat except, of course, he currently had no throat to clear, ‘I wonder if one of you could summarise your insights in lay terms that the rest of us could understand?’

One of the spirits who’d been involved in the conversation before floated forward, ‘I’d be happy to. Unless someone else wants to volunteer?’

The spirits behind her muttered that she was welcome to do the honours.

‘Thank-you, I’m sure you’ll summarise it nicely. I’m sorry, I can’t recall your name,’ Arthur said with a ghostly smile.

‘Feng Mian,’ the spirit replied, ‘look it is hard to say, really, what will happen because from a perspective grounded in biological sciences to date it simply makes no sense. Current theories cannot explain this phenomenon. But if we accept—as we must in the light of clear evidence—that life is no longer dying, is no long _able_ to die then we need to immediately ask: does this apply to single-celled organisms?’

‘Single-celled organisms?’ Arthur repeated, ‘you mean, like bacteria?’

‘Precisely. Single-celled organisms are all around us. The Earth is teeming with this form of life. In fact, there are more cells in the human body that aren’t genetically human than there are cells that are human. If it extended to single-celled organisms, how will this affect the balance of life? What will this mean for multi-cellular creatures like humans? We can foresee two key scenarios. The first is that whatever it is that is happening only applies at the whole organism level. This would mean that individual cells within a multicellular organism will be able to die. In this scenario, life will quickly become overwhelmed by pathogens, single-celled organisms that cause disease.’

‘Meaning?’ Arthur said.

Feng paused trying to think of how to best explain it, ‘everyone is going to get sick, very sick, horribly sick, in fact and modern medicine won’t be any use. Basic hygiene won’t be much use either. Yet, they won’t be able to die. To put it colourfully everyone is going to rot without dying first.’

Aziraphale made a little distressed noise and Crowley squeezed his hand tightly, ‘could we put it a little less colourfully?’

Feng’s ghostly gaze flicked to Crowley and Aziraphale, ‘Sorry. It’s pretty awful.’

‘What about the second scenario?’ Arthur asked, ‘that would involve the individual cells in multicellular organisms also being unable to die, yes?’

‘Quite. A kind of homeostasis between organism and pathogen would be reached I suppose. Hard to clearly know what that would be like at the whole organism level. Perhaps, the best prediction is that everyone would stay about as sick as they are right now.’

‘Oh, well that’s a much better scenario,’ Aziraphale said with a little sigh of relief, ‘let’s hope for that.’

Feng shook her head, ‘No. The death of individual cells is actually quite important to the integrity of multicellular life. In that scenario we need to worry about cancer. Oh, and neurodevelopment, of course.’

Aziraphale made another little distressed noise and Crowley squeezed his hand.

‘Brilliant. Good news all round, yeah? Gonna make the fourteenth century look a barrel of laughs,’ Crowley drawled. He shuddered as some of his worst memories of the Black Death came back to him unbidden: the mass shallow graves, the carts stacked high with bodies, the stench and the despair. He thought seeing a third of the population die was the most horrific thing he’d ever seen. Who knew it could be worse when they didn’t die?

‘There’s more,’ Feng Mian continued, ‘the other big question we need to ask is: how does this affect the food chain? Now that… well, I’m not sure I can even begin to fathom what that is going to mean. Are prey going to be not just eaten but _digested_ alive? Will all carnivores simply stop eating meat?’

Aziraphale chewed his lip thoughtfully. He cleared his throat and quoted, ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together,’ he swallowed hard, ‘Isaiah 11:6,’ he sighed, ‘sounds lovely until you realise the wolf, leopard and lion are all starving. Wasting away with no hope of death.’

Feng Mian shook her head, as much as a spirit can be said to shake her head, ‘well, actually we also need to ask: are plants able to die? If they aren’t, then the lamb, goat and calf will waste away too. I can’t quite fathom it, a world without death. All I can say is that death is a normal and necessary part of life as we know it. Death is part of the ecosystem, it is part of integrity of multicellular life and it is part of the balance between organisms. Without it…’ she shrugged as much as a spirit can be said to.

‘Ye think naught be worse than death, but there be worse, and it is coming,’ Aziraphale whispered, quoting Agnes Nutter’s second set of prophesies.

Crowley squeezed his hand. 


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Ethan nearly died. Lil and Evie saved him with a miracle. Lil, guided by her love for Ethan, saw that the fault in the world was death and removed death from the world.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days until The Big One, Early Morning**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

‘Ye think naught be worse than death, but there be worse, and it is coming,’ Morgan whispered hoarsely. She was sitting on the sofa in the living room with Newton and Anathema beside her, one on either side. Morgan’s screen was unfolded and propped up on the coffee table in front of them all and the remains of their breakfast—toast with marmalade and tea— sat beside the screen. Morgan scrolled through the news reports and they all frowned, taking it in with horrified silence.

Newton cleared his throat, ‘well, that makes sense now doesn’t it? Worse than death.’

Anathema nodded; her forehead lined with worry. Then she sneezed. And sniffed. And sneezed again.

‘You alright, love?’ Newton immediately asked, anxiety twisting his features.

Anathema shrugged. ‘I’ll be fine. Just hayfever or a cold, I expect.’

As if on cue, Morgan coughed. What began as a little dry cough turned into a great coughing fit. Newt leapt up and fetched a glass of water from the kitchen. His eyes narrowed suspiciously as Morgan drank it. He sighed, ‘you’ve got it too.’

Morgan shrugged and placed the now empty glass on the table with a clunk, ‘Just a cold.’

Newton chewed his bottom lip and swallowed hard. His throat hurt. In fact, his bones ached in that awful way they did when he was coming down with something. Newt shook his head. Oh, this was bad. You can’t just remove death from the world and not expect consequences. Newt’s mind circled the barely half-formed idea anxiously.

‘Let’s think this through,’ Newt said, gesturing to the news on the screen as he sat back down, ‘and explore what this really means. Noone can die. Right. Fine. But what if I’m literally blown to bits. To tiny little bits. If I can’t die then would I still be alive and conscious while I’m...’ Newt stopped as he registered the looks of pure horror on Anathema and Morgan’s faces.

‘Fuck, dad!’ Morgan said, ‘that’s bloody awful!’

‘Language,’ Anathema said to Morgan automatically with a tut before she turned to frown at Newt, ‘that’s pretty morbid, dear.’

‘Yeah, but it’s true. I would be blown to bits and still alive, maybe even conscious. What would that even be like?’ Newt rubbed his hands over his face, lifting off his glasses and repositioning them, ‘well, lets hope that doesn’t happen to anyone.’

‘You think?’ Anathema said with raised eyebrows.

‘But, okay, right, let’s think about something else. What about food? What is everyone going to eat?’ Newton asked, opening his arms wide.

Anathema shrugged, ‘Vegan food, I guess?’

‘Plants are _alive_ , Anathema. They are alive. Look just, wait here,’ Newton ducked into the kitchen, returning with an apple, ‘look see, this apple is still full of living cells, right? And…’ Newton took a bite, chewed and swallowed. He waited, ‘Hm. Nothing happened. Seems the same,’ he took another bite and chewed, ‘Actually tastes pretty good.’

Morgan frowned in frustration, ‘What was your point, dad?’

Newton paused a while, thinking it through, ‘either it doesn’t apply to plants or…’ his voice trailed off for a moment, ‘oh!’ he put the rest of the apple on the coffee table and walked outside, ‘follow me.’

Anathema and Morgan followed, still not understanding his train of thought. Newton took them out to the edge of the lavender field. He looked around for awhile and picked a young plant, one that wouldn’t have an overly developed root system. ‘Right, that one,’ he gripped the plant hard around the truck and pulled. The plant refused to come up. He gripped and pulled again, tugging with all his might. His grip slipped and he fell, landing on his arse.

‘Sweetheart, I say this with love, but maybe you should work out more,’ Anathema said with a chuckle, ‘you used to be a lot stronger than that.’

Newton laughed without offence. ‘That’s not the problem. I pull up the plants all the time, love. Don’t you see? The plants won’t die. The apple was alright. But not because it is a plant. Because it isn’t an _organism_. It’s just, well, just a fruit. What if a cell that’s part of an organism can die, but an organism cannot?’

Anathema and Morgan frowned.

‘Okay,’ Anathema answered scratching her head, ‘well, I guess we’ll eat fruit.’

‘What?’ Newton said distracted by his own thoughts, ‘yeah, yeah sure. Eat fruit. I…’ his mind whirled, putting the implications together. He swallowed hard and his throat hurt, a sharp, nasty pain.

‘Oh, this, no,’ Newton whispered as it all came together, ‘oh no, this isn’t good…’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days until The Big One, late morning**

**Hogback Wood**

Adam sat in his old childhood hangout for the longest time, silent and still, Dog his only company. Memories from long ago, memories from a very particular summer, came flooding back. Adam recalled standing on this very spot and commanding his friends to be silent, commanding them to smile. He remembered carving the world up in his mind for them to share. Adam remembered it all and, more importantly, he remembered that it had not a been a game. It has been real. It had all _really happened_. I’m the Antichrist, Adam Young thought to himself, feeling the weight of certainty that the thought contained. I’m the Antichrist, Adam repeated in his thoughts, except I choose not to be. 

Dog licked Adam’s hand and Adam scratched his head, fingers digging into that spot behind his ears where Dog liked to be scratched the most. Oh. Adam looked down at his beloved companion. Oh. His mind suddenly tripped one of the most ordinary facts of Adam’s life. I got Dog for my eleventh birthday, Adam thought to himself. He tripped over that fact and straight into a shocking conclusion: Dog is not a normal dog. Dogs don’t live for thirty years. Adam looked at Dog carefully. He didn’t even look old. Adam wondered for a moment why he hadn’t considered that before, why no one had ever mentioned Dog’s remarkable longetivity before. And then he instantly knew. It was kind of protective mechanism, protecting Adam, and by extension Dog, from the suspicions of others. A protective mechanism that would protect Adam even from himself if necessary.

Adam could have been the Antichrist. But he chose not to be. So, what was he then? Adam decided that he wanted to know. And so, instantly, he did. A kind of power bubbled up from deep within and seethed hot and strong through his veins. It had always been there, bubbling beneath the surface, but suddenly Adam aware of it again. It wasn’t the immeasurable power that he could have wielded as the Antichrist. But it was something. It was a lot, in fact. And now that he was aware of it again, he could use it consciously. 

Adam focused on a stick. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the stick and willed it to levitate in the air. He would have felt foolish except he knew it would work and it did. The stick immediately obeyed, jumping six feet in the air and floating there unnaturally.

Dog whimpered fearfully at Adam’s side.

‘It’s alright, Dog,’ Adam said with a smile and a little pat, ‘I’m not a kid anymore. And I’ll never be the Antichrist again. Even if I could, I wouldn’t do it, alright? I have all the world I want.’

Dog seemed to except this, going quiet and still, giving Adam’s hand a little lick. Adam smiled at him and let the stick drop.

‘Well, Dog, here’s the thing: we are living in strange times. Strange times, indeed. First, there’s that mass hysteria thing. Everyone acting strangely. And now, no one is dying anymore, and no one can work out exactly what that means except it turns out its terrifying. The last time stuff like this happened it was me. So, I reckon, there’s someone else like me doing this, huh?’

Dog licked Adam’s hand again, as if he agreed.

Adam remembered meeting Death. What had Death said? Something about how Adam couldn’t destroy Death? Something about how destroying Death would destroy the world? Adam remembered thinking that that wasn’t entirely true. It was possible to remove death and still have a world. The world could have been built death free. But it wasn’t. Death was a crucial part of the world that was, removing death from the world at this point? That would be destructive. There would still be a world. But it would be a very different place. And not necessarily better. There was no going back to that deathless world that could have been. Well, not without sweeping away everything that was and starting again. You can bake a cake without eggs, but you can’t remove the eggs from a cake that’s already been baked.

‘Yeah, someone like me is out there and they’ve tried to remove death from the world,’ Adam said, talking to himself as much as to Dog, ‘I should find them, talk to them.’

But how? Adam closed his eyes and concentrated, asking to be shown who was doing this. His self-knowledge had returned the moment he had decided that he wanted it again. Maybe this knowledge would come too. But, no. He came up with nothing.

‘Of course,’ Adam said, scratching Dog’s head as he thought it through, ‘they’d have a protective shield thing too. I wonder…’

Adam tuned into his own protective shield, noticing the little gap that it produced in reality. It was like a blind spot. The protective shield covered up what was really there—someone not entirely human—by forcing the brain to fill in what it expected to see based on what was all around. Hard to see. But, knowing what he was looking for, he could look around it, and notice the blind spot itself—the piece of the world that filled in, that changed to fit expectations.

Adam looked beyond himself, to the energy of the wider world, in the ethereal plane, moving in ever expanding circles, looking for another blind spot. He had to go slowly and carefully. He hoped they were close by. If they were on the other side of the world it would take all day. Maybe longer. Maybe a week. As it happened, they were close. It still took a several of hours, but finally Adam saw it: two overlapping blind spots.

‘Yes!’ Adam cried. Dog barked.

Adam jumped up quickly and stumbled as if drunk as his sensing of the ethereal world connected to his sensing of the physical. He took a moment to orient.

‘Right, that way,’ he pointed, ‘they’re that way. C’mon, Dog. We’ve got people to meet.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days until The Big One, late morning**

**St James Park, London**

Ethan sat on the bench and stared out at the ducks on the lake. The park was quiet. Much quieter than normal. But not entirely deserted. Occasionally a solo jogger would run past or Ethan would spot someone walking their dog or walking through the park on their way somewhere. One of the ducks slipped out of the water and waddled close to Ethan, hoping for some food. But Ethan had none. He opened his hands to show that they were empty, and the duck waddled away disappointed.

Ethan had spent most of the previous afternoon in the emergency room of the closest hospital, Lil by his side, Evie and Mia in the waiting room. The doctors and nurses could find nothing wrong with him. No physical evidence at all that anything had happened. In fact, every test they ran showed Ethan to be the very picture of excellent health.

Just as the medical team had reached the conclusion that Ethan was perfectly healthy, strange news had begun to circulate. Strange, unbelieveable news: no one was dying anymore. The hospital staff had been diverted to madly trying to figure out just what that meant. Ethan had been hurried out the door with a promise that the details of a follow up appointment would be sent to his UD. Lil had accompanied him home and ensured that he was well settled in. Then she’d returned to her own flat with Evie, and that was that.

Ethan knew that something profound had happened to him the day before. He couldn’t quite understand it. But he knew it was impotant. His mind was circling at the edge of something so unbelievable he couldn’t quite grasp it. But he had to. He would. He would grasp it. Or maybe he could grasp it. Maybe it was just hard to admit. But he would face it. And he would find a way to help Lil. Ethan shivered.

‘Hey,’ Mia said with a smile as she walked up to the bench.

‘Hey,’ Ethan jumped up, instinctively offering his hand.

Mia looked down at it and chewed her lip uncomfortably.

‘Oh yeah,’ Ethan said, pulling his hand back, ‘we aren’t supposed to do that, huh? Till they figure out… well, you know. I got the warning too,’ he pointed to his UD.

‘Thanks, yeah, strange times,’ Mia said, sitting down on the bench, keeping a decent amount space between them, ‘you alright?’

Ethan nodded, ‘Yeah. Fine. Well, a bit poorly. Think I might be coming down with something. But no ill effects from yesterday’s whatever it was, mini-stroke or episode or whatever,’ Ethan chewed his lip, ‘look, thanks for agreeing to meet with me, before our double date I guess. Must seem a bit weird. And there’s all this other stuff going on, so I dunno.’

Mia shook her head emphatically, her bohemian-style beaded earrings beating against her chin, ‘No, I get it. I was relieved when you messaged me. We definitely need to talk.’

‘Right, okay,’ Ethan said, licking his lips, ‘so, this is all a bit messed up. I dunno where to start.’

Mia laughed, ‘I know. Who does? It’s alright. Just plunge right on in.’

Ethan sighed, running his hand through his hair, ‘Right, so. Right. There’s something going on with Lil and Evie. I noticed Lil was different straight away. Lil doesn’t know things that, well, everyone knows. Didn’t even know anything about dogs when I first met her. Like, nothing. Who applies for a job washing dogs when they don’t even know how to pat one? But she’s smart, so smart. Eventually, I figured they were raised in a cult, you know? Sheltered. Lil said they have this mission someone is making them complete. Won’t tell me more than that. Again, I figured a cult. I’ve been reading up about cults. Trying to figure out how to get her out. But yesterday…Mia, I nearly died. I mean, I was dying…’

Mia nodded, her hands twisting in her lap, suppressing the instinct to put her arms around him, ‘I know.’

Ethan chewed his bottom lip, ‘I, I think my soul left my body. I was floating up above and I saw…shit please don’t think I’m crazy, but I saw the Grim Reaper, he was beckoning me down a tunnel of darkness and stars. Then Lil and Evie touched my body. They did something. Fixed it somehow and I was pulled back. It was like, like a _miracle_ ,’ Ethan swallowed hard. A duck squawked. Ethan laughed, ‘Shit, that sounds nuts. I sound nuts. The thing is I really like Lil. I think, I think I’m falling in love her. But I don’t think she’s…is it possible she isn’t…’ Ethan gulped.

‘Entirely human?’ Mia finished.

Ethan laughed. He rubbed his face and groaned, ‘Crazy, huh?’

‘Yep,’ Mia replied, she sighed, twirling a piece of her hair nervously, ‘it is nuts but also, I think, quite accurate.’

Ethan turned to Mia, shocked and relieved, ‘really?’

Mia nodded and licked her lips, ‘Aha. I saw them, you see, at that moment after they healed you. Ethan, their eyes were glowing like, like… oh I can’t even describe it. All orangey and red and fiery and they both had halos. But not quite like you see in the movies. Their halos were burning. Halos of flame,’ Mia shuddered at the memory.

‘Wow,’ Ethan whispered, open mouthed, ‘wow’.

‘And Evie was on her knees praying. She was begging God to reveal what God wanted from them. They turned it all off—the glowing eyes and the halos—before the ambulance arrived. I don’t think they realised that I had seen it. I think they were so distracted that they kind of forgot I was there for a moment.’

Ethan turned back to the lake and for few moments they both watched the ducks in silence. Ethan swallowed hard, ‘So, this is real then? This is happening. It isn’t just a weird side effect of whatever happened to me yesterday?’

‘Nope,’ Mia said with a quick head shake, ‘it’s happening.’

A duck waddled out of the lake and looked towards Ethan and Mia hopefully. Ethan opened his hands to show that he had nothing and the duck jumped back into the lake with a disappointed splash.

Mia started to giggle, ‘you know what I thought when I first saw Evie? She was all worried, desperately trying to take in the Head Nurse’s explanation of what she was supposed to be doing, she had that little crease she gets in her forehead when she’s really concentrating. You know what I mean, Lil gets it too.’

Ethan nodded with a fond smile, he knew exactly what Mia was talking about.

‘She was so adorable and perfect,’ Mia continued, ‘and I thought: what an angel.’

‘Ha!’ Ethan laughed. They spluttered and giggled together, the absurdity of their situation for a moment eclipsing the fear and worry.

As their laughter settled, Ethan ran his hand through his hair and asked, ‘Do you think that’s what they are? Angels?’

Mia shrugged, ‘Kinda, maybe? I mean I don’t think fully. But I dunno, halos? Miracles? Sounds like angels, huh?’

‘Fuck,’ Ethan said, ‘I’m in love with an actual angel.’

Mia snorted. Then she sighed, ‘I don’t think you are too far from the truth to think they were raised in a cult,’ she chewed at her lip, ‘Evie pretty much said that her family was abusive.’

‘Right,’ Ethan said, ‘family? That’s who, God?’

Mia shook her head, ‘I’ve thought about that and I don’t think so. The way Evie was praying… Evie loves God. The thing is though God isn’t talking to her. I don’t think she’s in communication with God any more than you or I are. Whoever raised them it wasn’t God.’

‘Right. Well, that’s probably a good thing. Wouldn’t want to have to go up against God,’ Ethan replied, deadpan.

Mia snorted.

‘Hey, you don’t think they are part of the whole no one dies anymore thing, do you?’ Ethan asked with a frown.

‘Well, bit of a coincidence isn’t it? They bring you back from the brink of death and suddenly no one can die?’ Mia said, gesturing widely.

‘You don’t think they knew it’d be, well…’

‘A bit of a horror show?’ Mia said. She shook her head, ‘no, I don’t think they knew. I don’t think they know what they are doing to be honest.’

‘They need our help,’ Ethan said hoarsely, his eyes glinting with a fierce determination.

‘Yeah, I think they do,’ Mia said. She rubbed her face and sighed. ‘I think, I think we’ve gotta confront them with it all. Today. Tell them we know what’s going on and that they need to let us help.’

Ethan nodded thoughtfully, thinking this through. It can be risky, he knew, to be too confrontational with someone when you are trying to get them out of a cult. But, oh the other hand, they had to do something. And they could only begin to do something, they could only begin to help, if they could get Lil and Evie to understand that they had to be honest with them. ‘Yeah, yeah you’re right. I just hope they are ready to hear it.’

‘Ready to hear what?’ Lil’s voice rang out through the park.

Ethan jumped. Lil and Evie were striding along the path, quickly approaching Ethan and Mia on the bench. Ethan shifted about on his feet uncomfortably and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Oh, hey, Lil, Evie,’ he said with a smile.

Mia stood up more confidently than Ethan had done and grinned at them both, ‘Hi.’

Evie smiled brightly at Mia, her face lighting up with joy.

Lil grinned wildly and sped up, running the final few metres and throwing her arms around Ethan, planting a kiss on Ethan’s mouth. Ethan’s arms wrapped around her in turn and he deepened the kiss. As the kiss ended, Lil ran her fingers through Ethan’s hair and whispered, ‘How are you? Still doing alright?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. Well, just feeling a bit poorly like everyone else,’ Ethan answered with a shrug and a little smile, running his own hands through Lil’s raven-black hair.

‘Poorly?’ Evie repeated as her hand slipped into Mia’s and squeezed. She turned to Mia, ‘Are you feeling poorly too?’

Mia shrugged and nodded, ‘Yeah. Everyone is. They figure it is connected to the whole not-dying thing but no one seems to know why. I mean no one knows why no one is dying anymore either though, huh?’

Evie grimaced and glanced nervously at Lil. Lil glanced back and shrugged sheepishly, her eyes quickly slipping away from her sister’s gaze.

‘We aren’t supposed to be doing this actually,’ Mia continued, raising her hand, still joined to Evie’s.

‘Holding hands?’ Evie asked, her forehead developing the little crease that Mia loved so much, ‘why?’

Mia shrugged, ‘Precaution, they said. I dunno. Spreads disease, I guess? With everyone feeling poorly and no one knowing why, I guess the doctors thought we should start being careful.’

‘But no one can die,’ Lil said, shaking her head in confusion, ‘what’s to fear from disease now?’

Ethan frowned. ‘Lil, there’s more to fear from disease than death. You haven’t been keeping up with the news?’

Lil shook her head, ‘No. To be honest we were pretty exhausted when we went home yesterday. We haven’t been been awake long.’

Mia smiled knowingly, ‘Of course. The elimination of death. I imagine a miracle of that scale would be pretty tiring.’

‘What?’ Lil said, her eyes widening in shock. Evie began to giggle hysterically at Mia’s side.

Ethan grabbed Lil’s hand and squeezed, ‘It’s alright. We want to help. I care about you, Lil. Mia and I want to help you both. And, you can tell us everything, alright? We’ve already figured out you aren’t well, entirely human.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Lil spluttered, her eyes wide and terrified as she pulled her hand away from Ethan.

Evie stepped back from Mia at the same time, her hand slipping through Mia’s grip.

‘It’s alright, Evie,’ Mia said with deliberate gentleness, ‘I care about you. We’ll help you. We want to help you escape from the ones who hurt you.’

Evie laughed, again with a definite note of hysteria. ‘Escape? You don’t know what you are saying. Escape from angels and demons? There’s nowhere we could hide where they wouldn’t find us. And if we let you help we’ll only put you at risk too.’

Evie and Lil looked at each other, simultaneously conveying the same message in their own silent, careful language. They must act now to protect Mia and Ethan. There was no other choice. They had fucked up again. And if they’d fucked up again, then they were probably going to fail. After all, there was very little time left. If they failed, then Heaven and Hell would be after them. And if Ethan and Mia were anywhere near them at the time, if Archangel Gabriel or Lord Beelezebub knew how much Evie and Lil cared for Mia and Ethan, well, they’d destroy them just to punish Evie and Lil. There was only one way to protect the two people they’d come to love the most. They had to cut all contact. And they had to do it now.

Mia faltered at her suspicions being confirmed. As confident as she’d been, it was unbelievable. She swallowed hard, ‘You were raised by angels and demons?’

Lil sighed and shook her head, ‘of course not. That’s crazy, right?’ But it was obvious to Mia and Ethan that everything they had been discussing was true. Evie and Lil were not entirely human.

Mia chewed her lip, ‘we want to help. Maybe, if you tell us everything, we can…’

‘There’s only one being who can save us and that’s the Almighty!’ Evie cried, ‘Can you produce her? Does she answer your prayers? Have you seen her buying a latte at your local café? Walking her dog in this park, perhaps? Did you meet her once on holiday at the seaside?’

Mia bit her lip and shook her head sadly. A little tear trickled quietly down her left cheek.

‘Then what help can you possibly be?’ Evie screamed, ‘Are you going to stand with us against Heaven and Hell, against immortal beings of infinite power? And even if you did, do you think you could possibly win? You’d be destroyed in an instant and,’ Evie swallowed hard her eyes welling with tears, ‘and I’m not letting that happen to you.’

Evie turned to Lil without waiting for Mia’s reply, ‘we’ve fucked up again. We need to figure out what’s gone wrong now and put it right.’

Lil nodded, wiping away tears with the back of her hand, ‘I’m sorry. I thought…I did what love was telling me to do, Evie, just like Jesus said. It should have worked.’

‘It’s alright. I know,’ Evie replied softly, ‘I… we’ve both fucked it up now. Let’s just go and put it right and come up with something else before we run out of time.’

‘Let us come with you,’ Ethan said, doing his best to follow their conversation, ‘Let us help. You need to come up with another idea, right? Maybe we can help you with that. Thinking outside the box, you know?’

‘How could you?’ Lil laughed, shaking her head, ‘What can you possibly know of this? Like Evie said, how could you stand with us against beings of immeasurable, boundless power? To them you’re like an ant, a flea…You’ll only get hurt. Don’t you see that, Ethan? If they knew that I…’ Lil bit back the rest of her sentence, ‘Just stay away.’

‘If we figure out how to fix the world, then we’ll find you, I promise,’ Evie said, knowing in her heart that this promise was worthless for without the Almighty’s intervention they would surely fail, ‘But for your own safety you have to leave us alone until then. And if we never come for you, please, be happy. Live your life.’

Evie stepped forward and planted a slow delicate kiss on Mia’s lips. Lil stepped towards Ethan and kissed him just as tenderly.

Mia shook her head and clutched at Evie, tears trickling down her face, ‘Let us help.’

‘Please, Lil,’ Ethan begged, refusing to let go of Lil.

‘No,’ Lil said, her eyes welling with tears, as she used her superior strength to pull away from Ethan, ‘stay away.’

Lil clicked her fingers and shook her head sadly. Evie and Lil turned as one and walked away without looking back.

Ethan and Mia tried to follow. They tried so very hard. They wanted to desperately. They wanted to grab Evie and Lil, to pull them around, to guide them back to the bench to talk it all through. But, somehow, they couldn’t move. They were rooted to the ground. They couldn’t even talk. And there they stayed like silent statues as Evie and Lil became tiny dots on the horizon that vanished altogether into the distance. And they stayed longer still, silently mourning the loss, not knowing what to do.

Eventually, Mia and Ethan began to shuffle and stretch. They could move again. They could move in any direction except the one direction that they longed to travel in. They still couldn’t follow Evie and Lil.

‘What have they done?’ Ethan cried out in frustration, as he tried desperately to will his feet to follow Lil and, yet again, found that they would step in any direction but that one.

Mia shook her head, rubbing away tears with the back of her hand, ‘I don’t know. Made it so we can’t follow them somehow,’ she sighed in frustration, ‘the idiots.’

Just in that moment their UDs began to beep simultaneously with an urgent government message. Ethan frowned at his UD and tapped it, triggering the message to play out loud. A serious and official voice enchoed throughout the park making the announcement with a perfect received pronunciation accent. 

_‘The British government has declared a state of emergency. The Prime Minister has issued an edict directing all citizens, residents and visitors to return to their place of residence for quarantine, effective immediately. This is consistent with advice released this morning by the World Health Organisation Pandemic Response Unit and by the advice of our own Chief Medical Officer. I repeat, you are directed to return to your homes for quarantine, effective immediately. The police forces and the military will be mobilised to ensure compliance. Do not stop to do shopping on the way. Instructions on how to register for the delivery of essential items will be released shortly. Failure to follow health directives is a crime punishable with fines and imprisonment.’_

‘Oh, fuck,’ Ethan mouthed.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Lil removed Death from the world. As a consequence there is a pan-disease pandemic. The scientists in the garden are also concerned about the food chain. 
> 
> Aziraphale and Crowley figure that Heaven and Hell must have captured Death. Aziraphale has a plan to find out more.
> 
> Adam has fully remembered that he is the Antichrist and has realised that the strange events must be caused by someone like him. He is finding that someone by following the protective shields which create blind spots in the universe.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before The Big One, Morning**

**Official London entrance to Heaven and Hell**

Aziraphale paused outside the building and took a deep breath of the crisp morning air. A strand of long brown hair had come loose from his braid and Aziraphale twisted it around his finger, tucking it behind his ear. He felt not at all like himself. Wrong clothes. Wrong colour hair. Wrong body. Well, no, not wrong body. It was his body after all. But not the one his spent most of his time in. For Aziraphale, getting into his female form was like getting into an evening gown: something he was happy to do whenever needed, something he enjoyed doing on special occasions even—especially if it brought on admiring gazes from Crowley—but he nevertheless felt not quite himself, not quite comfortable.

Crowley’s old mobile phone buzzed from where it was tucked into Aziraphale’s gaudy and tasteless jacket. Aziraphale immediately understood. Crowley was checking on him from his current position inside the phone, probably concerned by Aziraphale’s hesitation.

‘It’s alright, old boy,’ Aziraphale said softly, patting the jacket, ‘just a dash of nerves. This mission is much safer than our last one. I’m just after a bit of information this time, after all.’

With one last deep breath, Aziraphale strode into the building, walking beyond the escalators that led to Heaven and Hell, and straight towards Hell’s Accounting Department. Aziraphale walked up to the counter to find the very same demon that he had dealt with last time was sitting at reception, carefully painting her talons a lurid shade of orange. Perfect.

The demon tutted as Aziraphale approached barely pausing in the painting of her nails to look up insolently. But once she did lift her eyes, her bored expression immediately transformed into a look of horror. She leapt from her chair and pointed at Aziraphale, ‘You! No, no! Not you! Pick someone else’s shift!’

Aziraphale smiled politely and waved a little wave, ‘Hello, again. Well, that’s a shame and here’s me thinking we were meant to cooperate now. Oh, dearie me.’

The demon’s eyes narrowed and she grimaced, shaking her head and showing her rows of sharp shark-like teeth, ‘you bastard…’

‘It’s alright,’ Aziraphale said hands in the air, ‘no checks and no audits. I promise. I just want to talk.’

The demon snorted, ‘talk?’

‘Yes,’ Aziraphale smiled, carefully schooling his features into his best expression of faux innocence, ‘Talk. What was your name again?’

‘Never said,’ the demon growled, still standing, as if poised to run.

‘Right, course not,’ Aziraphale cleared his throat, putting his hands behind himself to resist the temptation to start wringing them nervously, ‘thing is…well, you must have noticed that no one is dying anymore?’

The demon glared and hissed sarcastically, ‘We’re accounts?’

‘Of course,’ Aziraphale said with a little nod, ‘Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Now, obviously it is all part of the New Alliance thing, but I wasn’t entirely clear on exactly, well, on exactly what was…um… happening…’

The demon’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, ‘If you’ve somehow missed all the briefings and the memos, why don’t you just ask your supervisor or one of your angel friends? Why would you come to me?’

‘Well,’ Aziraphale swallowed hard, ‘the truth is, I’m not exactly, that is I’ve never been particularly, um, well, liked…’

It occurred to Aziraphale, in an uncomfortable rush, that that was not a lie. He had never enjoyed the regard of the other angels, no matter what he had done to seek it, no matter how carefully he had kept to the rules, or what he had done to impress. Noone had ever really understood him, no one had ever really liked him, no one that is until Crowley. An old wound unexpectedly ruptured and bled a little. Aziraphale carefully put those feelings inside. None of that was relevant anymore. It was all ancient history, quite literally.

The demon snorted again, ‘Well, there’s a big surprise.’ She sat back down, relaxing a fraction, tapping her talons on the desk as she thought it all through, ‘so, no friends you can ask. Your supervisor though? I mean, they have to brief you?’

Aziraphale shook his head sadly, ‘I’m a bit of a failure to be honest. If I admit that I lost track of the memos and briefings, well,’ Azirphale shrugged and scrunched up his nose, ‘it wouldn’t be pleasant.’

‘Oh, boo hoo,’ the demon said with a dramatic hand gesture, ‘what you’ll get a dressing down or something? Your supervisor will be a bit rude? You wanna get in trouble with a supervisor down here. We get torn to pieces, literally. Why should I care about your petty problems?’ She sniffed loudly and picked up her nail polish brush, returning to painting her talons a lurid shade of orange.

Aziraphale felt Crowley’s mobile phone buzzing is the pocket of his coat. Yes, yes, dear you were right, he thought, patting the coat to signal that he understood. Plan B then. Crowley’s way. Aziraphale gulped.

‘Look,’ Aziraphale said, putting his hands on the desk to get the demon’s attention.

The demon looked up and sighed like it hurt, ‘you still here?’

‘Look, all of that is true, but there’s more,’ Aziraphale paused, licking his lips, ‘I’m afraid it is rather delicate,’ he leaned close and whispered, eyes darting around, ‘a bit embarrassing.’

‘Like I said, what do I care?’ the demon replied looking back down to her nails.

‘The thing is, the thing is, my supervisor he- he- well, he wants me to _do things_ with him, ‘Aziraphale announced dramatically, eyes wide, ‘Human things. He wants me to do _intimate things_ with him _the human way_.’

The demon looked up with immediate interest, her shark like teeth visible as she smiled widely at this juicy tidbit, ‘the _human_ way?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Aziraphale nodded furiously, ‘you know, all humanly with the er…special bits,’ Aziraphale gestured down his body with wiggling fingers, ‘He’s been most insistent. That’s why I’m out of the loop, you see. Been avoiding him.’

‘Is that right?’ the demon chuckled, eyes lit up with pure delight, ‘with the special bits? Oh! That filthy bastard.’

Aziraphale nodded seriously.

‘So, why not go over his head?’ the demon asked, still smiling widely, ‘Talk to the angel above him or something? I mean you’re an angel. You’ve got processes and procedures and rules and rules about rules. Ain’t like it is down here.’

Aziraphale shook his head abruptly, ‘oh no. I simply can’t do that. That’s where he got the idea, you see. It’s spreading through the ranks from above. In fact, it is coming, you know, from, well, from some quite high places,’ Aziraphale widened his eyes significantly.

‘What?!’ the demon cackled in utter delight. Better and better, ‘How high?’

Aziraphale pressed his lips together, and tipped his head to the side, ‘not the absolute highest, naturally, but ah, quite _quite_ high. Inner circle, shall we say?’

The demon guffawed.

To Aziraphale’s knowledge nothing quite like that had ever happened. He certainly couldn’t imagine any of the Archangels—who lost their minds at the notion of sipping a cup of tea—experimenting with human-like sexuality. In the old days the Archangels had been quite keen to share God’s love as they had called it. Aziraphale had long since realised that what the Archangels had called sharing God’s love was not the sharing of God’s love at all, but rather natural expression of the deepest of intimacy. Between himself and Crowley they called it intermingling. But human-like sexuality? Aziraphale could not imagine any of the Archangels experimenting with that. No matter. There was no need for truth to interfere with gossip.

Aziraphale sighed and shook his head. The demon’s interest was well and truly piqued. Time to close the deal. ‘Quite a bit of arse licking in Heaven,’ Aziraphale said with a raised eyebrow, ‘and I’m afraid that nowdays not all of it is metaphorical, if you catch my drift.’

‘Oh, I do,’ the demon said with a nod and a knowing smile. She licked her shark-like teeth carefully, ‘most interesting. You know, I always suspected Heaven would be full of it. The more uppity you are, the kinkier you are, am I right?’

Aziraphale pressed his lips together and nodded carefully, his ears going a bit pink.

The demon paused for a bit, thinking it over. It was a very juicy piece of gossip indeed and it was also potentially useful. There was a trade in gossip in Hell and she could gain quite a bit in status for this. In contrast, the information that this annoying angel wanted was universal knowledge and hence, utterly worthless. The demon came to a decision and shrugged, ‘Right, so, word is it’s the twins. They’ve got a week to change the world, so here we are.’

‘The twins?’ Aziraphale repeated without comprehension.

‘Eve and Lilith?’ the demon answered.

‘Right. Course. Right. Eve and Lilith. And they are?’ Aziraphale asked, eyebrows raised.

‘How long have you been avoiding your boss?’ the demon chuckled.

Aziraphale coughed, ‘Since 1964.’

She shook her head, ‘you poor, stupid bastard. Eve and Lilith are the next Christ and Antichrist. Well, they are both, both. They both have the divine and the devilish and the human in them. Gabriel takes credit for it, but word is it was all Beelezebub’s idea, really. They were raised in Heaven and Hell, so there could be no human corruption. You know, like what happened with Jesus and Adam. They are meant to fix, well, everything,’ she laughed, ‘I guess they are still working out the bugs, huh?’

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale’s mind reeled as this new information slotted into place with some of the most impenetrable of Agnes Nutter’s prophesies, the baffling phrases suddenly unravelling into clarity, ‘Oh!’ he whispered to himself, ‘Two shall rise, Eve’s blood with Adam’s power, Heaven and Hell and Earth…Oh…’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, um,’ Aziraphale gulped, ‘where they have put Death, do you think?’

The demon snorted, ‘I dunno. Why would I know? Not here, I can tell you that much.’

‘Right, course,’ Aziraphale nodded, chewing his lip, ‘And where are Eve and Lilith?’

‘No idea. Earth somewhere.’

‘Well,’ Aziraphale nodded, ‘thank-you. You’ve been most h-’

‘Look, fuck off. I ain’t your friend,’ the demon’s mouth curled threateningly.

‘Right. Course. I’ll be off then. Yes,’ Aziraphale said, hurrying away.

‘Oi! Bastard angel!’ the demon called out a moment later.

Aziraphale glanced back.

‘1964? Maybe time to swallow your pride and whatever else he wants. You know, get it over with, huh?’ she paused, and shrugged, ‘either that or rip his face off and eat it in front of him. Either way. Fuck off now. What do I care?’

Aziraphale nodded and hurried on, as fast as he could without risking drawing attention to himself. He moved smoothly outside the building and walked several blocks down the road, slipping into a little side street. Crowley’s mobile phone began buzzing in his pocket. He patted it, ‘patience, dear.’

As Aziraphale turned into the side street he took the mobile phone out of his pocket and whispered, ‘all clear.’

Crowley emerged at once, materialising out of the phone directly in front of Aziraphale. He reached immediately for Aziraphale’s face and planted a soft kiss on his lips. He sighed, ‘you’re alright.’

‘I’m quite alright, yes.’

Crowley put his index finger to his own temple and concentrated, ‘no one followed. Get in the car, angel. We can discuss it going home.’

They both moved quickly from the side street to the car. Aziraphale slipped into the passenger seat of the Bentley and Crowley was soon pulling out into London traffic at speed, anxious to quickly return his angel to safety. Aziraphale clicked his fingers, returning to his actual female form in appearance and clicking them again to return to his usual, more comfortable, male form along with is usual attire. He sighed with the contentment of someone removing their evening gown and slipping into their most comfortable pajamas.

‘Did you hear it all?’ Aziraphale asked as he stretched his neck.

Crowley nodded, ‘Yeah. Heard it all. Eve and Lilith. Like Jesus and Adam ‘cept got both the divine and the devilish in them somehow. Raised in Heaven and Hell. Trying to fix the world whatever fucked up nonsense that means.’

‘That about sums it up,’ Aziraphale said with a little nod, hands finding each other in his lap and twisting.

‘So,’ Crowley said, turning to Aziraphale, ‘we’ve got to find Eve and Lilith? S’fine. Easy. We found Adam, didn’t we?’

‘I found Adam,’ Aziraphale corrected with an eyebrow raise, ‘ _you_ lost him as I recall.’

‘It was a joint effort,’ Crowley argued back, glaring at Aziraphale.

‘The finding or the losing?’ Aziraphale asked, a little smile playing about his lips.

‘Both!’ Crowley growled, still staring at Aziraphale.

A pedestrian stepped out onto the road and Crowley quickly swerved as Aziraphale clutched to the seat.

‘Tosser!’ pedestrian called out as Crowley swerved around him and sped on past.

‘Oh, dear,’ Aziraphale tutted, ‘while I don’t care for his language, I do think you need to pay a bit more attention to the road, Crowley.’

Crowley waggled his head from side to side mockingly. Aziraphale ignored him.

‘I’ll look through the prophesises when we get home,’ Aziraphale said after a pause, ‘That’s how I found Adam, after all. I know what I’m looking for now. I dare say I’ll have better luck figuring them out. They are already making more sense to me.’

‘Yeah, alright,’ Crowley agreed, still smarting.

Minutes slipped by silently, Crowley quietly stewing. Eventually, he recalled something else the demon had said. He turned to Aziraphale again and said, voice laced with glee, ‘The more uppity you are, the kinkier you are. You know, there’s some truth to that, huh, angel? I mean from my personal experience it certainly rings true. Terribly kinky, angels are. They hide it, of course, hide it for thousands of years even. But then it all comes out and it turns out they’ve been entertaining all kinds of kinky thoughts about you in their supposedly perfectly pure heads all that time. What do _you_ think, angel?’

‘Oh, do shut up, dear,’ Aziraphale replied, turning to look out the window, a pink blush dusting his cheeks.

Crowley turned back to the road, a big grin on his face, satisfied that he had won the verbal jousting for now.

As London disappeared and was replaced by countryside flying past Crowley began to laugh, ‘Gossip spreads very quickly in Hell, you know. The less truth to it, the faster it spreads.’

Aziraphale chuckled, ‘does it now? What a shame.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before The Big One, morning**

**Paradise Budget Hotel, London**

Yesterday had been a long day for Adam. Following the blind spots was a brilliant plan and it had worked. But it had also been intense, exhausting and slow-going. Adam had inched slowly, closer and closer to the little blind-spots, the filled-in part of his perception that he knew indicated two overlapping protective shields, two protective shields that were protecting two someones a bit like him. Adam had needed to pull his car over regularly to re-orientate. That was one of the reasons why it had all taken so long. He’d stop his car, get a fix, drive just a little closer, stop again. It was a painful and frustrating process. It had taken all of the previous day to get himself to London. And on top of that, it turned out that constantly tuning in to his ethereal sight took a lot of energy.

By the time Adam had gotten himself into vaguely the right area of London it had been very late at night and Adam had been absolutely shattered, unable to carry on. He had reseigned himself to the reality of his own exhaustion and booked himself into a hotel, using his newly rediscovered abilities to make the staff look the other way when it came to his canine companion, had a long shower, and fell into a restless sleep, Dog crawling into bed beside him.

Adam woke at a decent enough hour, refreshed from his sleep, and keen to immediately set out again. He ordered breakfast sent to his hotel room and ate it quickly, sharing it with Dog, putting some of the bacon butty onto a second plate for him. Dog wagged his tail and woofed in gratitude.

As they ate their breakfast Adam got his UD out of his bag, opened the foldable screen and propped it up on a table. He selected the morning news to play, watching the screen as he ate.

_Although the immortality phenomenon persists, with no deaths since the last recorded death two days ago, the rates of ill-health across the world have stabilised, with many people reporting a complete reduction in their symptoms. Medical doctors have explained that it is as if the population has returned to normal immune functioning. Some scientists are speculating that we have reached a new equilibrium with pathogens. However, they emphasise that the exact nature of this new equilibrium is unclear. In fact, the nature of the immortality phenomenon remains unclear._

Adam nodded and smiled around a mouthful of his bacon sandwich. Maybe they were sorting it out. Perhaps they had found something Adam couldn’t, a way to remove death from the world without destroying it. Adam liked it when other people were unexpectedly smarter than him. It happened so rarely. When it did, it was always a joy. He immediately decided that if they had found a way to remove death without ill effects, he would simply shake their hands and congratulate them.

_This latest twist in the immortality phenomenon is not all good news, however. Oncologists are concerned that there may be an increase in the rates of cancer. Cancerous cells are usually killed off by the immune system. The Cancer Council has stated that if individual cells within the body are unable to die, then cancerous cells too will be unable to die. Medical doctors advise the public to seek medical attention immediately if you notice anything untoward._

Adam sighed. Not totally fixed then. They were still in need of help. That much was certain.

_In other news, strange changes have been observed in the behaviour humans and animals alike. Sales of fruits, vegetables and eggs, all foods that contain living cells have plummeted, with people across the globe, universally turning towards processed foods. Animals too, are showing changes in dietary preference or even a complete absence of appetite. Tourists in Africa have captured this photo of a lion lying down with a lamb._

Adam looked up from his breakfast at the photo displayed on his foldable screen—a large male lion lying side by side with a lamb--and shook his head. Definitely in need of help. He downed the rest of his tea.

_Scientists confirm that many animals rely upon killing to eat. Even many herbivores rely upon the killing of plants and fungi for their food. It is hard to comprehend exactly what the food chain could be in a world without death. The immortality phenomenon is already affecting food supplies across the globe. Here to discuss this conundrum are…_

The news report ended and a panel of commentators, including two scientists, two politicians and a farmer began a series of long and worried discussions about how the world’s food supplies were going to be maintained, and what exactly the food chain could look like in a world without death.

Adam sighed and shook his head, rubbing his face with his hands. He turned the news off, folded up his screen and placed the screen and his UD back in his bad. He ran a hand through his hair and looked down at Dog, ‘multi-disease pandemic, then cancer, now no food chain. Did I ever cause this much trouble?’

Dog looked up at Adam with big brown eyes and whined.

Adam laughed. ‘On second thought, don’t answer that. C’mon, we’ve gotta find them. They need us. Clearly.’

Adam decided it would be easiest to travel the rest of the way on foot, leaving his luggage and car at the hotel. He set out, Dog at his heels, pausing every so often to orientate to where the blind sports, and hence the protective shields where. It was a slow process, but not as frustrating as needing to pull over in his car the day before. Just as he was getting close, Adam, caught up in his ethereal sight, stepped out onto the road and was nearly hit by a vintage Bentley doing well over the speed limit.

‘Tosser!’ Adam yelled out as the Bentley sped away. He shook his head and muttered to Dog, ‘I reckon that Bentley was doing 90k at least. In London. If you are going to insist on driving, at least keep to the speed limit. No solar panels, either. Probably thinks it’d spoil the look of the car. Vintage car people, honestly. Wankers, the lot of them.’ 

Dog barked in agreement and they moved on, carefully following the blind spots. Eventually, Adam managed to narrow it down to a specific block of flats. Adam stood in front of them, eyes squinting, ‘yeah, they are in here somewhere, alright. C’mon, Dog.’

Adam waved his hand and the flat’s security looked the other way as they both entered. Adam paused again, narrowing down to the specific flat in question. He strode up to the door, confirmed one final time that the two protective sheilds were originating from within this flat, and knocked.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before The Big One, morning**

**A flat in London**

Evie and Lil sat together on the couch, a foldable screen unfolded and propped up on the coffee table in front of them both. Lil held a cushion tightly across her middle.

Evie chewed her lip as she scrolled through the news. She sighed and shook her head, ‘Lil, it is not working. Look,’ she pointed to the screen, ‘Even with our tweaks. It is not working. They’re talking about a spike in cancer. Cancerous cells must be killed they’re saying. And then there’s the food chain. What is everyone going to eat when the food supplies run out? Look at that,’ Evie said pointing to the photo of a lion cuddled up with a lamb, ‘looks lovely, huh. But that lion is going to waste away. The lion is going to waste away without being able to die. It’s awful.’

Lil kept her arms tightly folded across the cushion, clutching it protectively to her her chest. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She shook her head, ‘We need to do more tweaks then. There has to be a way.’

Evie sighed. She looked across to her sister and smiled sadly, ‘I’m not sure there is a way to remove death, Lil. Not without destroying the world. It was a good idea. It really was. But I think we need to face the facts. It isn’t working. And we have only one day to find something that will work.’

Lil chewed at her bottom lip, the tears prickling at the corners of her eyes breaking through and rolling down her cheeks, ‘I just. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want him to die. I can’t ever lose him, Evie.’

Evie sighed. ‘I know, it’s alright, Lil. It’ll be alright.’

‘No!’ Lil cried out, ‘No! It’s not alright! It’s not alright at all. We saved Ethan. But only for a little while. Ethan is condemned. A dead man walking. They all are. We are. Everyone we ever love will die. Why would God make the world like this?’

Evie opened her arms wide and pulled Lil into her embrace, gently stroking her hair as she wept. Eventually, as Lil’s tears settled Evie said hoarsely, ‘I don’t know, Lil. I don’t know why God created death. She doesn’t exactly talk to me, remember.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Lil asked in a little whisper, still holding on to Evie.

‘I don’t know that either,’ Evie replied with a sigh, ‘But we have until tomorrow to figure that out. Twenty-four hours and Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub will be returning and they are going to want a solution.’

‘Or else…’ Lil whispered. The threat lingered in the room. They didn’t know exactly what would happen to them, but it’d involve destruction or torture or both.

Knock knock.

Lil and Evie looked up to the door with a confused frown.

Knock knock.

Lil’s heart thumped in her chest. Could it be Ethan? No, of course it couldn’t. Ridiculous. It was impossible for it to be Ethan. Lil herself had ensured that Ethan couldn’t follow her, that he couldn’t simply come over. Yet, still she longed to see him. Still she wished that he had somehow found a way. Stupid. But if it wasn’t Ethan, if it wans’t Mia, then who was it? Noone else had ever visited them at their flat. Not that it technically was their flat. But still.

Lil dried her eyes and Evie and Lil moved towards the door together, opening it cautiously, just enough to see who was on the other side. They opened it to find a man and a dog. Lil immediately liked the dog. The man was a stranger. He looked like he was in his forties, handsome, with a mop of curly brown hair and piercing blue eyes.

‘Hello,’ the stranger smiled like he was absolutely delighted to meet Evie and Lil, ‘can I come in? I’d love to talk to you, and I suspect you are going to want to talk to me too.’

‘Who are you?’ asked Evie, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

The man smiled brightly, ‘I’m Adam Young. The Antichrist,’ he shrugged, ‘Well, former Antichrist. I kinda refused the role.’

‘Oh,’ Lil gasped, ‘Better let him in, Evie.’ The stranger was right. Lil did want to talk to him.

Evie opened the door fully and beckoned Adam to come in, ‘I’m Evie. This is Lil.’

Lil grinned and Adam nodded and smiled as he entered the flat.

Evie cleared her throat, ‘Um, can we get you anything?’

‘Nah. It’s alright,’ Adam replied, looking around the flat, ‘So, this is your place?’

‘No,’ Evie replied with a shake of her head, ‘We’re just staying here awhile. We used the app, you know, to borrow someone’s flat.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Adam said with a nod, ‘I know what you mean. I’ve done that a few times.’

Lil bent down and began to pat Dog. Dog wiggled with delight at the attention as Lil found that perfect spot behind his ear. Lil grinned, ‘Nice dog! What’s his name?’ she said quickly adding, ‘or her name or whatever.’

‘His,’ Adam replied with a proud grin, ‘his name is Dog.’

Lil snorted. She’d heard a lot of dog names by now. It was one of the few subjects that she felt she had truly mastered and she knew enough to know that that was a very strange name, ‘real creative.’

‘Hey. Saves a lot of trouble a name like that,’ Adam replied with faux outrage.

Lil shook her head and laughed. She decided that she liked Adam.

‘Lord Beelzebub didn’t send you or anything like that, did she?’ Evie asked, chewing her bottom lip, ‘Or I dunno, Lucifer?’

Adam thought about this a moment, chewing his lip and trying to remember, ‘Beelzebub? She’s the one with the big fluffy fly thing on her head, right? Starts to buzz when she gets excited? Nah. Not sent by her. Or Lucifer. That’s Satan, right? Big scary thing with the horns? I haven’t heard from anyone in thirty years. Forgot I even was the Antichrist until a few days ago.’

‘How do you forget you are the Antichrist?’ Lil asked, still scratching Dog’s head.

Adam shrugged, ‘I was a kid when it all happened. I grew up and as I grew up, I convinced myself that it was all a game. Made more sense that way, I guess? Well, until all kinds of weird stuff started happening again. Brought a few memories back, you did. Being the Antichrist doesn’t seem quite so unbelievable when no one is dying.’ Adam chuckled.

‘Is that why you are here then?’ Evie said.

‘I suppose. I just thought you might like some support, from someone who’s, well, like you,’ Adam said with a smile, ‘someone who’s maybe been in a similar position to the one you’re in now.’

Lil licked her lips, ‘That makes sense. Maybe, maybe you could understand.’ She looked to her sister for confirmation and Evie nodded in agreement.

‘C’mon, then,’ Evie said, as she gestured towards the living room, ‘take a seat.’

‘Thanks,’ Adam said with a smile as he sat on one of the single armchairs, Dog curling up at his feet.

Evie and Lil sitting next to each on the couch. Evie chewed her lip nervously. Adam smiled.

‘So,’ Adam said, clearing his throat, ‘you hearing voices then? Telling you that you’ve got to destroy the world? I remember all these voices,’ he pointed to his head.

Lil shook her head, ‘Not voices, no, and not destroy the world. You see, we were raised in Heaven and Hell. Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub gave us our mission directly. We are supposed to fix the world. By tomorrow.’

Adam nodded carefully, thinking this through, ‘I see. By tomorrow? Fix the world?’

‘I actually think, ultimately,’ Evie chimed in, ‘our mission comes from the Almighty. But I think what the Almighty wants us to do is very different from what Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub expect. If we can return the world to what the Alimghty intended, I think maybe Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub will see reason and not, I don’t know, throw us into the deepest pit of Hell or whatever they have planned. Or surely the Almighty will rescue us somehow? If we do manage to obey her will, I mean.’

Lil shrugged a little, chewing her bottom lip. She wasn’t at all sure that the Almighty was ultimately behind their mission. If the Almighty turned up and gave them a solution, then Lil was all for them taking it. But until that happened, well, Lil would remain quietly sceptical.

‘Right,’ Adam said, leaning back to consider this. He decided not to give his opinion on the chances of any of that. He ran his hands through his hair, ‘And what does the Almighty want you to do?’

Lil shook her head, ‘Don’t know. She hasn’t communicated with us directly. Not ever. Evie has been praying heaps too.’

Adam raised an eyebrow, ‘Well, it isn’t really her style, is it? Hasn’t been in contact with anyone for awhile I’d wager. She’s certainly never spoken to me. Not even when I was about to destroy the world.’

‘I see…’ Evie answered with a little disappointed sigh.

‘And the whole weirdness with the no killing and the mass destruction of religious relics, that was you, wasn’t it? And this whole no death stuff now?’ Adam asked.

Lil bit her lip and nodded, ‘Yeah. Pretty much.’

Adam nodded, right leg bouncing rhythmically, ‘They’re saying it is going to mess up the food chain. Removing death. You seen that?’

Evie nodded, eyes darting to Lil, ‘we did, yes.’

‘But how can we live, any of us, knowing that the people we love will die?’ Lil blurted out passoinately, ‘That we must lose them?’

Adam smoothed out his pants, giving this proper consideration, ‘I can certainly see where you are coming from. I thought about it too, removing Death from the world. Met Death, you know. It’s doable. Well, course it is, you’ve done it. But, at this point, Death’s well, Death’s kinda baked in. You can’t remove Death without breaking this world, without messing up the way things work. We could have had a deathless world. But that’d be a very different world to the one we have. In all kinds of ways.’

‘So, you think we should bring Death back then?’ Lil asked, tears glistening in her eyes, ‘you think we should just accept that the ones we love will die?’

Adam shook his head, ‘I didn’t say that. That’s up to you,’ Adam licked his lips and looked away, towards the window, out to the London traffic. He remembered his father’s funeral. He remembered standing next to the open coffin, saying his goodbyes. He remembered the pain, the pure pain, in his mother’s voice as she’d wailed. He remembered the grim realisation that he would never see his father again. That no matter what he did, he could never see him again. For a moment, he wondered how that day would have been if he had remembered at the time that he was the Antichrist. Would he have tried to bring his father back? Would it have worked? Would his father have risen from the coffin like Lazarus?

When Adam spoke again his voice was hoarse with choked up emotion, ‘My father died last year. Eighty-one. Would have been nice to have him around for longer, but still. It was a good innings, all things considered. He never did give up his pipe, after all. Only so much the doctors can do when you keep sucking that poison into your lungs, I told him. A good innings. And, yet…’ Adam swallowed thickly, ‘There are still moments when I miss him so badly, I feel as though I’m the one who died. There are moments when I’d willingly break the world, tear it to pieces for a single moment with him again, to tell him I love him one last time.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lil replied, tears welling in her eyes.

Adam smiled sadly, wiping tears away with the back of his hand, ‘It is what it is. I’m not being glib when I say I know where you’re coming from. I do. I think, well, I think all of humanity does. But I don’t know any way of removing Death from the world without breaking it. I’m sorry.’

Lil sighed and wiped away her own tears. ‘So,’ she choked out, ‘What would you do then? How would you fix the world? Because we’ve only got another 24 hours and we are all out of ideas.’

Adam laughed. ‘Oh, I had my chance,’ Adam shook his head, ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do.’

Lil sighed. She rubbed her face. ‘Right, course you aren’t. Right.’ Lil grabbed a cushion off the couch and fiddled with it, picking at the loose cotton threads, ‘I don’t mean to be rude. But you pretty much refused to play your part in the Great Plan, huh? Left the world as it was.’

Adam gave this some consideration, ‘Yeah, pretty much. That’s fair. Though I did tweak a few things and there were a few wild experiments before I reached that conclusion. But, yeah, I figured that although there are problems, we’ve gotta let people sort them out. It’s the best way. Anyway,’ Adam said with a shrug, ‘that was my conclusion. Maybe you’ll come up with something different.’

‘A major difference between us I think is that you were commanded by Satan, our true mission, I believe comes from God herself,’ Evie declared importantly, straightening up on the couch.

Adam shrugged, nonplussed, ‘Hasn’t actually told you what it is though, huh? What she wants you to do?’

Evie tutted, ‘As you said, directly telling people what she wants isn’t exactly her style.’

Adam laughed, ‘No, it isn’t. I wonder what God thought of what I did?’ Adam was lost in his own thoughts for awhile pondering that very question before he shook his head, clearing it, ‘no matter. They were my choices and I made them. I’m happy with what I did regardless.’

Adam looked back to Evie and Lil. They were hunched up together on the couch, Lil fiddling nervously with the loose threads on a cushion, Evie chewing at her lip. They were young, Adam thought, so young. Barely adults. Kids, really. Adam remembered that he had been only eleven when he had confronted the Great Plan for himself. Had he really managed to find wisdom at such a young age? How had he managed that? If he could figure that out, then maybe that would give Evie and Lil the way forward. Ah, but he hadn’t done it alone, had he? Adam remembered how crucial the Them has been. Brian, Wensleydale and Pepper. They’d all played their roles. Adam couldn’t have done it without them. They’d anchored him and helped him every step of the way. Evie and Lil had each other. That was clearly precious. But they needed more than that. They needed friends. They needed humans.

Adam cleared his throat, ‘I can’t tell you what to do, how to fix the world, or whether or not to even try. But I can tell you how to figure out what to do.’

‘Yeah?’ Lil said, leaning forward curiously, ‘how’s that?’

‘Not alone,’ Adam said definitely, ‘with your friends. You made any friends down here? You must have done if you are so frightened of death already, yeah?’

Lil and Evie looked at each other.

‘Yes,’ Evie said, clearing her throat, ‘yes, we have.’

Adam nodded, ‘Good. Very good. They are the key. Without my friends I never would have figured out my solution. Ask them for help. Look to them. They’ll help you figure it out. Help you do what needs to be done.’

Evie sighed, and looked to Lil again. Lil looked away, chewing at her lip and picking at the cushion.

Adam’s eyes narrowed, ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you think they’ll help? Because if they really are your friends, they will. Believe me. They’ll help you to the end of the world.’

Lil shook her head, ‘Oh they’ll help. They’ve offered. We sent them away. Didn’t want them to get hurt. Didn’t think they could possibly understand.’

Adam snorted, ‘Look, I know we are all technically half-human or something, right? But the thing is, ordinary humans aren’t as stupid or as fragile as you think. Let them help. They’ll have good ideas. They’ll steer you right. And they’ll truly be able to help. I promise. You need them. That’s the only way you’ll get through this: together.’

Lil thought this through carefully. Perhaps Adam was right. After all, he would know. She nodded. ‘Alright then. We will. We’ll ask them for help.’

Adam ran a hand through his hair, messing it up, ‘Well, I think that’s about all the wisdom I have to offer. But I’d like to be there tomorrow, when it all goes down. Just to offer support, you know? That okay?’

Evie nodded, ‘Alright,’ she smiled broadly, ‘actually, that’d be good. Can we message you or something? Tell you where we are?’

Adam nodded and they exchanged contacts, Adam putting his UD onto his wrist at the same time. He’d keep wearing it for now. As much as he hated the damn thing on his wrist, he needed to make sure Evie and Lil could contact him instantly.

‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow I guess,’ Adam smiled, standing up. Dog jumped up too, readying to follow. Adam remembered the two beings, the two strangers, who’d appeared out of nowhere to stand with him when he’d faced down Satan. An angel and a demon. He remembered what they’d said. That no matter what he did, for good or for evil, they’d be there for him. Adam smiled. And now it was time for him to be there for Evie and Lil. He smiled and said, ‘Whatever you decide, I’ll be there for you.’

‘Thanks,’ Lil smiled, bending down to give Dog once last scratch. Dog barked a goodbye as Evie and Lil saw Adam to the door. Adam waved a final goodbye and Evie shut it. She turned to Lil, ‘We’ve got to let Death go.’

Lil nodded, ‘I know. I know. Alright. First, let Death go. Then we contact Ethan and Mia. We tell them everything and ask for help.’


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Lil removed Death from the world. It hasn't worked quite as she'd expected... 
> 
> Adam visited Evie and Lil, by following the protective shields which create blind spots in the universe. His advice? Don't do it alone. Reach out to your friends. 
> 
> Aziraphale managed to get information out of the demon at Hell's Accounting Department. They know now about Eve and Lilith.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before the Big One, about midday**

**A flat in London**

The very first thing that Evie and Lil had to do was to release Death, and they moved to do it immediately, Adam’s footsteps still echoing in the hallway outside, Dog’s toenails clicking as he walked beside him.

Evie and Lil walked from the closed front door and into the living room, hand in hand. They closed their eyes, and drew down upon their powers, their eyes glowing with all the power of creation as halos of flame burst into existence around their heads. Slowly, carefully, they looked for Death, finding Azrael where Lil had tucked them away, in the great nothingness that was before and beyond everything that was, in the emptiness beyond and underneath it all. Working as one, they reopened the path from nothing to something and back again. Working as one, they freed Azrael, allowing them back into the world. And, presently, back into the world Death came.

A figure appeared in the flat, tall and dark, wearing long, dark cloak and carrying their trademark sickle.

‘DECIDED TO LET ME GO, HAVE YOU?’ Death said, amused by the turn of events. 

‘Yes,’ Lil said, chewing on her lip, ‘It turns out you are a key part of how this world works. We can’t remove you without destroying it.’

‘WHO KNEW?’ Death snorted, ‘WELL, IF YOU’VE DECIDED TO RELEASE ME THEN I’D BETTER GET GOING. THANKS TO YOU TWO, I HAVE A LOT OF WORK TO CATCH UP ON.’

‘Wait,’ Lil gulped, ‘We can’t remove you from this world without breaking it. But there _could_ have been a deathless world. You leave such sadness in your wake, such suffering…’

‘I DISPEL SUFFERING TOO,’ Death replied soberly, ‘I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT YOU’D UNDERSTAND THAT NOW.’

Lil nodded, ‘I do,’ she spread her arms wide, ‘I mean no offence. What I mean is, there could have been a world without suffering and without death. So why did God create you? Why did God create the suffering that we rely upon you to dispel?’

Death shrugged, their long black robe rippling with the movement like liquid night, ‘WHY WOULD I KNOW THAT? DO ANY OF US KNOW WHY THE ALIMIGHTY CREATED US? IT IS INEFFABLE.’

Lil chuckled. Of course. Of course. Death wouldn’t know. If the Archangels were no longer in communication with the Almighty, then why would Death be? She shook her head, ‘No, of course. I suppose you wouldn’t know, would you?’

‘You don’t happen to know what the Almighty expects from us?’ Evie asked with a frown, ‘Or how to contact her directly?’

Death shook their head, their robes rippling once again, like waves on the ocean on the darkest of dark nights, ‘I DO NOT.’

Evie sighed and tutted, ‘Well, thank-you anyway.’

‘Yes,’ Lil added, twirling her hair with a little anxious twist, ‘you’ve been quite good about the um…locking you out of reality business all things considered.’

Death laughed, a deep dark chuckle. ‘I’M USED TO RECEIVING A POOR RECEPTION. ACTUALLY, I APPRECIATED THE HOLIDAY. I HAVEN’T HAD SO MUCH AS A TEA BREAK IN 6000 YEARS. I’LL BE OFF.’ Death spread wings of night, wings of the blackest of black in which there shone little points of light, tiny dots that could have been stars or could have been something entirely else. The wings flapped powerfully once, and then twice and then Death was gone.

Lil slumped down onto the couch, ‘And now, we contact Ethan and Mia. Tell them everything. Ask them to help and hope they have the ideas we need.’

Evie nodded as she tapped at her UD, setting it to call Mia. 

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before The Big One, early afternoon**

**Paradise Budget Hotel, London**

Adam lay on the bed, Dog cuddled up beside him, stroking Dog’s fur and watching the news unfold on his UD’s unfolded screen. He had liked Evie and Lil. He had liked them both very much. He had walked away convinced that the world was in good hands. He just hoped that he was right.

_In breaking news, the immortality phenomenon is over. The first death since the immortality phenomenon happened at 12:34pm today. Death has returned. As far as we can tell, anyone who we would normally have expected to die over the past two days is likely to die today. Changes in dietary preferences in humans and animals and other strange observations related to the immortality phenomenon also appear to have ended. Scientists still have no explanation for the immortality phenomenon and no explanation for why it has ended. Strange times, indeed._

Adam sighed in relief, a wide grin spreading across his face. Evie and Lil had done it. They’d released Death. The world was again, for now, back to normal. Adam tapped at his UD and flicked the news off. Silence settled over the room and Adam scratched Dog’s head, enjoying the quiet. If Evie and Lil had done this much, then they had surely also contacted their friends. Adam hoped that their friends were as brilliant as Brian, Wensleydale and Pepper. Thinking of the Them, Adam couldn’t help but smile. He kept petting Dog and quietly thinking. Eventually, Adam chewed at his lip, and whispered, ‘You know, Dog, Evie thinks their mission ultimately comes from God. I wonder if it truly does. And if it does, does that even matter? I disobeyed Satan, don’t you know? Would it have been any different if I’d been disobeying God?’

At this thought Adam froze. Would he have refused to destroy the world for God? Yes, he concluded. Yes, he still would have refused. Did that make a difference? Whether you were disobeying God or disobeying Satan? Dog whined, pawing at Adam’s side, wanting the petting to restart.

Adam smiled at Dog and began to scratch him again, ‘you know, I think you’re right. I don’t think it’d have mattered, either. Satan or God, destroying the world is bullshit. No reasonable person could, in good conscience, permit the destruction of the world. Even if it is God’s will. And I suspect that this fixing of the world business is just another way of saying destroying it, don’t you?’

Adam continued petting Dog, letting his train of thought play out. Dog sighed contentedly.

After awhile, Adam’s UD made a little pinging noise, indicating that he had a message. Adam leaned across to read it on his foldable screen. It was from Pepper. Nothing important. Just a link to the breaking news story. Just a friend touching base with a friend in a global crisis, reaching out through the panic and the confusion to say _hello, I’m still here_.

Adam smiled. He laughed. Oh, he was still so stupid, wasn’t he? He’d told Evie and Lil not to do it alone and here he was, sitting in a hotel room with no one but Dog. He really should learn to take his own advice.

Adam would show up tomorrow and support Evie and Lil as best he could. But even that he couldn’t do alone. Evie and Lil deserved Adam’s best self and being his best self meant turning up with the Them by his side.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**The Day Before The Big One, early afternoon**

**The Garden of the Faithless Good**

Arthur floated back and forth, trailing a little ghostly path over the lawn next to the lavender. It was a pattern he fell into whenever, in life, he would have paced. Floating back and forth, however, just wasn’t as effective as physically pacing for the relieving of anxiety. It was more a habit, really.

Their scouts—as Arthur had come to call the spirits who had established consistent communication with a loved one—had all reported this morning that the situation had changed somewhat. The pan-disease pandemic had resolved, much to everyone’s great relief. But, just as the scientists in the garden had predicted, that had left humanity with another looming problem: cancer. Live with infectiousness disease that your immune system can never beat or live with cancer? Either way, you don’t get to die.

There was no doubt, in Arthur’s mind—as a person who had died— that as horrific as death was the alternatives were worse. Without death, humanity was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Arthur’s ghostly form shimmered a little as anxiety moved through him. Arthur had survived a bout of bowel cancer, ten years before his final death. He wouldn’t wish an eternal battle with cancer on anyone. And that, it seemed, was what humanity now faced.

Arthur thought of his sister Maisie, his only surviving family. In the normal state of affairs— well the new normal state of affairs with a third afterlife destination—Arthur could have reasonably expected her to join him soon. Now, Maisie would simply waste away in a hospital bed somewhere, getting older and sicker, and more riddled with cancer, her mental faculties, her personality, gradually slipping away, an old empty husk living on unnaturally through the centuries. She’d hate that. Oh, boy, Arthur knew, Maisie would hate it.

Arthur had managed to transport himself back to visit Maisie. She was still living in her little cottage with her husband. Her life was going on as best it could beyond Arthur’s death and that was a source of great comfort for Arthur. But Arthur hadn’t yet become skilled enough at moving spiritually, at manifesting as a spirit in the physical world, to communicate with Maisie. Manifesting in the physical world took dedicated practice. There were so many other duties for Arthur to perform that practising visiting the Earth hadn’t seemed a high priority. Not after checking in to find that Maisie was doing okay. And not when Maisie—committed atheist and generally wonderful person that she was— would, after all, be joining Arthur soon enough. That had made so much sense at the time. Except, now, Maisie wouldn’t be joining Arthur, after all. She’d instead live on indefinitely, wasting away in pain, her great intelligence unravelling piece by piece.

No, Arthur forced himself to say to himself, no, that wasn’t going to happen. Aziraphale and Crowley were going to find out what was happening. Aziraphale had a plan to find out where Death was. Once they had that information then they could all come up with a plan to free Death, and everything would return to normal. Well, to the new normal. Some of the greatest minds to have ever lived were present in this garden. If they couldn’t, working together with Aziraphale and Crowley, find a way of releasing Death, who could?

Arthur heard the roar of the Bentley zooming up the road to the cottage, signalling that Aziraphale and Crowley were arriving home. Arthur moved straight towards the glass doors, hovering in amongst the lavender, ready for either of them to open it and signal that they were ready to discuss whatever they had learned.

Just as Arthur was expecting news from that direction—from Aziraphale and Crowley in the cottage— news came instead from within the garden itself.

‘A new arrival!’ a spirit shouted. The call was quickly taken up by all the spirits surrounding him, repeating the joyful message.

‘A new arrival!’ the ghostly voices echoed throughout the garden.

‘A new arrival!’ ghostly voices chanted, ‘more arrivals!’

A cheer rose through the garden, the ghostly shouts and laughs echoing and reaching a crescendo of excitement and relief. The spirits darted about happily, dancing and singing and celebrating.

Arthur ducked and weaved, through the joyful ghostly crowd, finding his way to the new spirits. The new spirits floated about, looking utterly dazed and confused, as ghosts danced and cheered around them.

‘Welcome, friends,’ Arthur smiled, thrilled to be performing his formal duties again, ‘Welcome to the Garden of the Faithless Good.’

It was over. Death was free.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before The Big One, early afternoon**

**A road approaching a certain cottage in Devil’s Dyke**

As Crowley turned onto the road that led to their home, Aziraphale continued to stare out of the window in quiet contemplation.

They had broken their journey by taking lunch at a quaint little café and bakery that Aziraphale had always fancied. It was a good opportunity to talk it all through, just themselves, before involving the occupants of the garden. And, anyway, the adventures of the morning had left Aziraphale feeling peckish.

Having talked it all through in the café, they had lapsed into a comfortable silence for the rest of the drive, both quietly turning over the new information in their heads.

They needed to find this Eve and Lilith. Aziraphale hoped he could achieve that with a little assistance from Agnes Nutter. But it didn’t end there. Once they found Eve and Lilith they had to convince them to release Death. And that might not be possible. If Eve and Lilith proved unwilling, then Aziraphale and Crowley would need to extract the whereabouts of Death from them and free Azrael themselves. How long would all that take? How many people would be held on the precipice of life and death in the meantime? How many would suffer?

The pan-disease pandemic seemed to have miraculously disappeared. But would new cases of cancer spike and grow as the scientists in the Garden of the Faithless Good believed they would? And what of the food chain? How many animals that would waste away, in pain and suffering, without the release of death? None of Earth’s creatures, great or small, deserved that. All of this meant that Aziraphale needed not just to figure out the prophesies but to figure them out quickly. And that thought made a knot of anxiety twist and turn in his stomach. Aziraphale bit his bottom lip as the Bentley roared up the final stretch of road that led directly to their cottage.

‘You make a start on the prophesies, angel,’ Crowley said as they pulled in, ‘I can update Arthur and the garden.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘I suppose that makes sense,’ he chewed at his bottom lip worriedly, hands twisting a little in his lap, ‘I just hope I can pull it all together in time. I haven’t been able to make sense of it all yet.’

Crowley turned the Bentley off and turned to Aziraphale, flicking off his sunglasses, and taking Aziraphale’s hands in his own, stilling the anxious movement, ‘Angel,’ he said with absolute tenderness, waiting until Aziraphale looked at him before continuing. When Aziraphale’s eyes met his own, Crowley smiled softly and said, ‘course you hadn’t made sense of it yet. To work out the prophesies you still need to match up the prophesy with what’s happening, yeah? How could you do that for everything when we had no idea what was happening? With Adam at least we knew there was an Antichrist,’ Crowley gave Aziraphale’s hands a little squeeze, ‘I reckon you’ve got the information you need to make sense of it all now.’

Aziraphale nodded, ‘Right. Yes. Of course.’

Crowley smiled affectionately, ‘One thing’s for sure. If you can’t work it out then no one can. My brilliant angel.’

Aziraphale flushed a little with pleasure, smiling coyly, ‘thank-you, Crowley,’ he squeezed Crowley’s hands back, ‘I love you.’

‘Love you too, angel.’

‘Well,’ Aziraphale sighed, eyes opening wide, ‘Better get a wiggle on.’

Crowley shook his head repeating mockingly, ‘Wiggle on,’ he snorted, ‘then you spoil a perfect romantic moment by saying something like that.’

Aziraphale stepped out of the car, ‘You love it as much as you love my tartan bow-ties. Don’t deny it,’ he said before he slammed the passenger door and marched into the cottage, clicking his fingers to unlock the door on the way.

Crowley growled to himself, mouthing, ‘Don’t deny it,’ with a mocking head waggle before he stepped out of the car himself, slamming his own door shut and sauntering through the cottage door. Aziraphale was already fussing about getting the prophesies ready for another thorough read through.

Crowley flicked his sunglasses back on, readying to step outside into the garden and discuss the situation with Arthur and the spirits. Crowley was already deciding that he would find DaVinci and get his views on it all. Leonardo was bound to have some good ideas. But as Crowley sauntered across the living room, an excited chorus rose from the garden.

Aziraphale looked up instantly, ‘what the devil?’

‘Hey,’ Crowley said with a grin, ‘Don’t blame me. ‘m still here.’

Aziraphale tutted, shaking his head, a little grin twisting across his lips nonetheless, as he stepped quickly towards the glass doors to look for himself. Crowley followed. The cheers and excitement continued, and as Aziraphale opened the glass doors, a wave of excited sound washed over them both.

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale cried, instantly recognising the exact emotional timbre of euphoria tinged with deep relief. He’d experienced it before so many times throughout history. It was the feeling of a catastrophe ending. ‘It’s over. It must be.’

A spirit floating near the door turned to Aziraphale and Crowley and confirmed, ‘Yes, it’s over. We have new arrivals.’

‘Oh Crowley,’ Aziphrale sighed, tears prickling his eyes, relief flooding his body.

Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and sighed. The crisis was averted. Death was back on duty.

‘Let’s just check the news, angel,’ Crowley whispered as he continued to hold on to Aziraphale, clicking his fingers to turn the television on.

_In breaking news, the immortality phenomenon is over. The first death since the immortality phenomenon happened at 12:34pm today. Death has returned. As far as we can tell, anyone who we would normally have expected to die over the past two days is likely to die today. Changes in dietary preferences in humans and animals and other strange observations related to the immortality phenomenon also appear to have ended. Scientists still have no explanation for the immortality phenomenon and no explanation for why it has ended. Strange times, indeed._

Crowley breathed a deep sigh of relief and squeezed Aziraphale tightly. He clicked his fingers again, turning the volume of the television to mute.

‘It’s over,’ Crowley whispered, ‘it’s really over.’ He wouldn’t have to watch humanity get sick or riddled with cancer, struggling on in pain without the release of death. He wouldn’t have to watch the suffering it would bring to the animals, to innocent creatures like gorillas or dolphins. All that suffering, gone. They were spared.

Crowley still thought Azrael was a bit of a cock. He still couldn’t stomach the fact that the bastard showed up for kids just because it was part of some blasted plan. But he had to acknowledge that Death had their role. They had their place. Just like demons. Crowley kissed Aziraphale’s head, burying his lips and nose for a moment into the softness of Aziraphale’s white curls, and breathing in Aziprahale’s unique smell. He breathed it in deeply and let it soothe him.

Aziraphale looked up at Crowley, tears still in his eyes. ‘Crowley, they must have released Death themselves, Eve and Lilith, I mean.’

Crowley nodded, ‘Yeah, must’ve,’ he licked his lips, ‘I wonder why.’

‘Don’t you see, Crowley?’ Aziraphale said, voice buzzing with excitement, body wiggling ever so slightly like he couldn’t contain himself, ‘They released Death because they didn’t intend for any of the horror of it. They have good intentions. They’ve been given the task of fixing the world, and they are trying their best to do it. It was a reasonable idea, after all. How many times have we thought the world would be better off without death?’

Crowley snorted, ‘Every time Death comes for a kid.’

‘Exactly! Eve and Lilith came by this idea honestly. They didn’t foresee the consequences. They’re just kids, doing their best. Like Adam was,’ Aziraphale smiled, his eyes lighting up, ‘and that means there’s hope.’

Crowley sighed, frowning a little, ‘Heaven and Hell will still want their war, angel.’

Aziraphale straightened, his eyes blazing with determination, ‘We’ve stopped them before.’

Crowley nodded. His tongue clicked in his mouth as he considered it. ‘Yeah,’ he drawled, ‘Yeah, I suppose we have.’


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Adam visited Evie and Lil, by following the protective shields which create blind spots in the universe. His advice? Don't do it alone. Reach out to your friends. After returning Death to the world, they contacted Ethan and Mia. 
> 
> Aziraphale managed to get information out of the demon at Hell's Accounting Department. Aziraphale and Crowley know now about Eve and Lilith. Aziraphale needs to look at the prophesies anew and see if he can make more sense of them now.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before The Big One, late afternoon**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke**

Aziraphale frowned as he hunched over the living room table, reading through the second book of Agnes Nutter’s prophesies again, printed pages in little piles in front of him and a cold cup of tea to the side of it all. He sighed, rubbed his eyes underneath his gold glasses, and kept reading.

It had been a long and exhausting day. It had been tempting, with the immediate catastrophe unexpectedly resolved, to simply collapse in relief. It had been so terribly tempting but acting on such a desire would proved foolish.

Aziraphale’s mission, while proving unnecessary where the liberation of Death was concerned, had given him key information, information that was imminently useful in working out the prophesies. Knowing, as Aziraphale now did, that Eve and Lilith existed— twins who mirrored Christ and the Antichrist both—certain aspects of the prophesies slipped into sharp relief. Aziraphale sighed and hummed to himself as his swift mind unravelled the words. He jotted down his deductions in a notebook, beautiful blue ink scrawls scratching along the white paper.

Crowley paced behind Aziraphale, making little noises of frustration. It had been a long and exhausting day for him too. But it wasn’t over just yet. They needed to make sense of the new information that they’d gleaned and to match it up with the prophesy. Well, Aziraphale needed to make sense of it. Working out ancient prophesies wasn’t exactly Crowley’s wheelhouse. And so, Crowley paced, and he waited, and he paced.

Aziraphale sighed deeply. He rolled his eyes.

‘My dear,’ Aziraphale said shaking his head, and slipping his glasses off for a moment to look at Crowley directly, ‘you are hardly helping with my concentration. I need to go through the entirety of the second book of prophesies again and I need to concentrate. Can’t you find something to do?’

‘Right. Yeah. Fine,’ Crowley drawled, ‘leave you to it. Sing out when you are ready to talk it through. Or if you, I dunno, want something.’

‘I will, dear,’ Aziraphale said, waving him away and perching his glasses back onto his nose, ‘now off you go.’

Crowley sauntered out of the living room space, into the adjoining kitchen.

‘Sure you don’t want another cup of tea or a cocoa?’ Crowley called out, ‘or something to eat?’

‘I’m fine, dear,’ Aziraphale sung out, ‘I just need to concentrate. Amuse yourself somehow, please.’

Crowley sighed, eyes scanning the kitchen bench and spying a single crumb. His eyes narrowed as he touched the crumb with his index finger, raising it to look at carefully. His golden eyes glinted, and he smiled as he identified a suitable target for his nervous energy.

Crowley flicked the crumb into the bin and stood up tall. He pulled his long hair back into a bun, then he clicked his fingers. His hands were instantly covered in long black rubber gloves and the bench top in a smorgasbord of cleaning products and scrubbing brushes. He glared at the benches, the sink and the cupboards, his gaze ending with the fridge, ‘m gonna scrub you within an inch of your life,’ he growled, ‘You are going to sparkle, do you hear me? _Sparkle_.’

Aziraphale looked up at the sound of Crowley’s voice and smiled when he took in Crowley’s plan. If Crowley was on a cleaning rampage, then Aziraphale would be left alone for hours. Splendid.

Aziraphale read through the prophesies carefully but efficiently. He knew them all so well by now, after all, practically by heart. But it still took time and careful attention to make new connections using his new knowledge. He hummed, and tutted, and made little notes in the margins, writing the key details and his fresh conclusions on his notepad.

Several hours later, Aziraphale sighed, satisfied, as he reviewed his notes. He nodded to himself, yawned and stretched. Outside the glass doors, night had fallen. Aziraphale clicked his fingers and turned on the light. He wandered into the kitchen looking for Crowley. But Crowley wasn’t there. The kitchen was, indeed, sparkling.

Aziraphale wandered through the house looking for Crowley. He found him in their en-suite bathroom.

‘You’re ready?’ Crowley said, looking up from a gleaming white bathtub.

Aziraphale nodded.

Crowley flicked off his gloves and clicked his fingers, instantly disappearing his cleaning paraphernalia back into the cupboard, ‘Good timing. ‘m done here. C’mon, then, let’s discuss.’

‘I’ll just get a snack,’ Aziraphale said, walking back to the kitchen, ‘want anything?’

‘Nah, angel,’ Crowley replied, undoing the bun in his hair and running his fingers through the crimson waves as they cascaded down his shoulders.

Aziraphale opened the pantry door and his mouth fell open. No matter how many times Crowley cleaned the kitchen somehow the level of organisation he managed to achieve always took Aziraphale by surprise. He stared into a pristine, perfectly organised pantry with suspicious amounts of shelf space, ‘Oh, Good Lord, Crowley! What have you done?’

‘Cleaned it, angel,’ Crowley said with a hand wave, ‘Organised it.’

Aziraphale wiggled nervously. No matter how many times this happened it was always rather unsettling.

‘You didn’t throw anything out, did you?’ Aziraphale asked anxiously, his eye moving quickly to his precious baking shelf. He ran his eyes over the ingredients, identifying each one, looking for any gaps, ‘if I find I don’t have custard powder or baking soda or something…’

‘They’re all there, angel,’ Crowley said impatiently, ‘hurry up and fetch your snack.’

Aziraphale nodded as he confirmed that, yes, everything was indeed there. He ran his hands over the shelves. Actually, he thought to himself, it was easier to see everything this way, ‘well,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose that’s alright then. If you’ve just organised it,’ he smiled, ‘Actually it’s rather nice.’

Crowley snorted. Aziraphale always came to that conclusion eventually. Well, about the kitchen anyway, which is why Crowley continued to clean it despite Aziraphale’s protests. ‘Hm…it helps not having four opened packets of desiccated coconut, doesn’t it? And do you know how many half-used packets of custard powder I found this time? Five. How does that even happen, angel?’

Aziraphale hummed in reply. Yes, Crowley had done a good job. Then a horrifying thought occurred to him, ‘But don’t you dare touch my books. I know where every one of them is! They are all perfectly organised in a very particular system.’

Crowley snorted. As if he’d overstep that line, ‘I do have some sense of self-preservation.’

‘Do you?’ Aziraphale shook his head with a little grin, as he pulled a container of caramelised cashews out of the pantry, ‘sometimes I wonder.’

‘You can talk,’ Crowley mouthed under his breath before adding at normal volume, ‘prophesies?’

Aziraphale nodded, munching on a handful of cashews. He led Crowley back into the living room and put the container with the cashews aside, picking up his notes, ‘well,’ he announced with a little wiggle, ‘it is all quite fascinating actually, you see…’

Crowley groaned, ‘Just give me the punchline, angel. Go on.’

‘Ah,’ Aziraphle smiled coyly, ‘Of course. The punchline. Let’s see…’ Aziraphale flicked the pages of his notebook several times, looked up at Crowley and declared, ‘It’s happening tomorrow.’

Crowley sighed, his head falling into his hands, ‘Tomorrow? Can’t they just give us a break every now and then? Give us time to rest?’

Aziraphale cleared his throat, ‘well, in fairness, they did give us thirty years, dear.’

Crowley shook his head and snorted, answering mockingly, ‘Oh, how generous of them… a thirty-year holiday after six thousand years of servitude,’ he sighed, running his hand through his hair, ‘where? Where’s it all happening?’

‘I can’t be precise about that,’ Azraiphale answered, a little crease forming on his forehead, ‘Not yet, anyway. There are a few prophesies about tomorrow’s events, and I hope we’ll be able to pinpoint it more exactly as things unfold. But I do think it will unfold where Eve and Lilith are, and they are in London. That’s clear. So, I believe it will all happen somewhere in London.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before the Big One, late afternoon**

**A flat in London**

Evie paced back and forth in the living room in front of Lil. Lil yawned as she stared at the ceiling from her position sprawled out on the couch.

‘Not long now,’ Lil said, as much to herself as to Evie, ‘they’ll be here any minute now.’

Evie hummed in agreement, but she also continued to pace, twisting her hair nervously as she did so.

‘And they’ll have some brilliant ideas, just like Adam said they would,’ Lil continued, saying what she herself needed to hear said.

Evie hummed again and she nodded a little nod.

‘I mean, he’s gotta be right about that, huh? He’s the Antichrist. Gotta be good advice,’ Lil said with a wide hand gesture. Of course, Jesus Christ’s advice hadn’t worked out that well, had it? But Lil decided not to voice that thought. They were down to their last chances. And it would do them no good at all to think about failing.

Evie hummed again. But this time her hum transformed mid-way through into a panicked, ‘yikes!’

Lil leapt off the couch to stand wide-eyed and terrified at Evie’s side.

‘A-Archangel Gabriel,’ Evie said, stumbling nervously over the words as she bowed. Lil quickly bowed too.

Gabriel smiled contemptuously, his lavender eyes darting about the room, as if disappointed to find it still wasn’t up to his standards.

A moment later Beelezebub appeared, seemingly growing up out of the carpet. She stretched her neck, and brushed herself down, ‘How are we doing, girls?’

‘Lord Beelzebub,’ Evie and Lil chimed at once, their heads still bowed. Evie clutched onto her skirt to stop her hands from shaking.

‘I’ve enjoyed your little experiments I must say. Quite inspirational,’ Beelezebub said with a grin, ‘I’ve put a team onto it, you know. They are using your little experiments as starting points for developing new forms of temptation and torture. I believe it will prove most fruitful.’

Evie and Lil grimaced. That was not, at all, what they had intended.

Beelezebub didn’t notice their pained expressions or if she did, she didn’t acknowledge them in any way. Her eyes flicked to Gabriel, ‘you were right, Gabriel, their humanity gives them the ability to see things that we cannot.’

Gabriel snorted in disgust, ‘Haven’t fixed the world yet, though, have they? Haven’t restored it to its intended glory?’

Beelezebub turned her head to the side and smiled in amusement, ‘True. While it was terribly diverting to see Azrael imprisoned, no, I don’t suppose they have fixed the world yet.’

Evie gulped hard, fisting her skirt to hide the shaking, ‘We still have a day.’

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed dangerously, ‘you still have a day,’ he whispered. He glared at Evie and Lil, lavender eyes flashing with menance before he yelled, ‘so fix it!’

‘Y-yes, Archangel Gabriel,’ Evie said hunched over, shaking with fear, ‘we are trying,’ still fearful, still quaking, she lifted her head slightly. She licked her lips, ‘I was wondering, would it be possible for us to communicate directly with the Almighty? To ensure that we understand exactly what she wants?’

Lil’s eyes widened, as she looked from her sister to Gabriel and back again. She chewed her lip nervously. 

Gabriel’s eyes flashed with anger but instead of lashing out he laughed. He laughed a great loud laugh that bounced and echoed around the flat. ‘I’m the Archangel Gabriel,’ he said, ‘I watched the Almighty create the stars and the planets. I watched her create the Earth, shape the oceans, breathe life into dirt and dust and call it human. I communicate with the Almighty through the Metatron daily, sweetheart. I know what the Almighty wants, and she wants you to fix the world.’

Evie nodded, eyes drifting low.

Lil swallowed hard, finding that Evie’s courage had fortified her, given her the strength to add a question of her own, ‘How long has it been since you’ve spoken to her directly?’

Gabriel’s face instantly went awful shade of purple. It clashed strangely with his lavender eyes. ‘How fucking dare you,’ he growled, stepping forward slightly to tower over Evie and Lilith, ‘You remember your place, Lilith.’

Beelezebub’s eyes lit up and she grinned gleefully.

Gabriel brushed down his suit carefully. He cleared his throat and a sense of control returned to him. He cocked his head to one side.

‘Do you know what’s going to happen if you don’t fix the world?’ Gabriel said softly. 

Evie and Lil shook their heads. They knew that something horrific would happen to them. They’d be destroyed, or boiled alive, or flayed or locked in the deepest darkest part of Hell for all eternity. They weren’t sure of the specifics. But they had never doubted for a moment that it would be absolutely dreadful.

‘Beelezebub,’ Gabriel said with a vicious grin, ‘Tell them.’

Evie and Lil gulped. So, it was to be some vicious torture of Hell then. Figures.

‘We are going to deszzztroy it,’ Beelezebub said, eyes lightening up in delight, ‘if you don’t fix it, then the world will be deszztroyed in fire and flame.’

‘What?!’ Evie and Lil cried out simultaneously. This whole time they’d known that their lives were on the line. But they’d never guessed that the stakes were actually so much higher.

‘You can’t do that!’ Lilith cried, tears welling in her eyes, ‘all those innocent people…’

Beelezebub snorted, ‘none of them are innoczzzent, Lilith. I thought I taught you better than that. Anyway, how do you know that’s not what the Almighty intended? It iszzz written after all.’

‘One more day!’ Gabriel shouted, his index finger raised up high, ‘We return tomorrow. So, fix the world!’ He paused and smiled menacingly, ‘or don’t. I don’t think I fucking care at this point.’

Beelezebub snorted, ‘the armies of Hell have been spoiling for a war for thirty years. Go on, girls, give it to them.’

Gabriel’s whole demeanour returned once again to business-like calm, ‘the armies of Heaven are also ready,’ he answered, like an executive confirming that his department was ready for a roll out of a new product at a company meeting, ‘This is your last chance, Eve and Lilith. Fix the world or we destroy it forever.’

With that parting message Gabriel and Beelezebub disappeared.

Evie and Lil clung to each other, tears springing from their eyes. They’d always known that a failure to achieve their mission would result in their torture or destruction or both. But they’d never imagined that the world itself was under threat. The pressure to find a solution, to fix the world, was now unbearably high, literally all consuming. At that moment the door burst open and Ethan and Mia ran in.

‘What’s happening?’ Mia cried out, running over to them, ‘are you okay?’

‘Yeah, we heard shouting,’ Ethan said looking around the room, trying to find the source of the strange voices, but finding the room empty, ‘were they here? The cult leaders, the angels or whatever?’

Evie nodded sadly, sobbing into Mia’s shoulder as Mia wrapped her arms tightly around her, ‘they were. They are gone now.’

‘You’re alright,’ Mia whispered as she stroked Evie’s dark hair, ‘you’re safe now.’

‘No, we’re not,’ Lil gulped, tears escaping and trailing down her cheeks, ‘but it is worse than that, it is so much worse than that. Neither are you.’

‘Please, Lil,’ Ethan said, frowning deeply as he took Lil’s hands in his own, ‘I’m begging you. Please tell us what exactly is going on. Please let us help.’

Lil nodded. Evie smiled sadly. And they began to tell them everything.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day before the Big One, late afternoon**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

Morgan’s eye gazed over the lavender fields to her left, and the grassy field in which the goats lived to her right. The kids were happily playing, head-butting each other. Her dad snorted in laughter as they charged, butt heads and then fell over. It never failed to amuse him. When he was trying to be funny Newt would claim that he felt a strange kinship with the goats, always head-butting things. Morgan suspected that he wasn’t entirely joking.

Morgan sighed, ‘So it’s over. Death is back.’

Anathema quickly jumped in, ‘that bit of it. There’s more to come. That’s clear.’

‘We said we deserved a break before dealing with what’s coming next,’ Newton said with a tut, ‘Enjoy the fresh air and sunshine, please girls. Just, watch the goats.’

Morgan obediently returned to watching the goats playing. The littlest one charged at a tree. The tree was unmoved. Morgan giggled.

Quiet minutes slipped by and Morgan had to admit that her father was right. A bit of fresh air and sunshine, a bit of time away from the prophesies was exactly what she had needed.

Eventually, it was Newton himself who raised the topic of the prophesies again, ‘well,’ he sighed, ‘I didn’t think I’d ever be happy about people dying, but I am.’

‘Who do you think fixed it that time?’ Morgan asked, ‘that’s what I don’t understand. Who else could be out there trying to fix this?’

Newton shook his head, ‘Who knows? Maybe those people you thought weren’t entirely human at the airbase, love?’ Newton said, looking to Anathema, ‘the less terrifying ones, you know, you said they hit you with their car and stole your book?’

Anathema frowned, ‘they definitely weren’t human. I’m quite certain that they fixed my bicycle somehow. And me, probably. Who walks away unscathed after being hit by a car? Could be them. They’d still be around I suppose, meddling.’

‘Should we contact them somehow?’ Morgan asked, a little frown creasing here forehead.

Newton pushed his glasses up his nose, ‘I dunno that that’s really necessary. They were pretty weird, love.’

Anathema shrugged, ‘We could, I suppose, if we knew how. We don’t know how. Anyway, it mightn’t be them. Maybe whoever stopped death to begin with also put death back again. They aren’t necessarily bad. Maybe they are just doing their best, trying to work out what’s right, just like us. I mean, remember Adam…’ Anathema’s voice trailed off and she bolted upright her eyes darting about as a whole series of conclusions fell into place.

‘Love?’ Newton whispered, waiting for her to speak.

‘Oh! That’s…’ Anathema gulped, ‘Eve’s blood and Adam’s power… don’t you see? Eve’s blood and _Adam’s_ power. We thought it was a reference to Adam as in the first man. Adam and Eve. But it isn’t. It is a reference to _Adam Young_. We’re dealing with another kid like Adam, a kid with all of Adam’s power, but with Eve’s blood. A girl. Oh! No! Not just a girl! _Two_ girls! _Twins_!’ Anathema leapt up and began to pace, quoting the prophesy in full, ‘Two shall rise, Eve’s blood with Adam’s power, Heaven and Hell and Earth, the fate of the world decided, not thirty years after it was to end!’

‘Oh!’ Morgan gasped. She shook her head, ‘Oh! Mum! That makes sense! It really does…’

‘Shall I fetch the book?’ Newton asked, already standing to fetch it.

‘The book, the cards, and a pen and paper,’ Anathema said with a hand wave as Newton nodded and hurried off. 


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Anathema realised that the prophesies mean that there will be two girls with all the power of Adam Young. But where are they?
> 
> Aziraphale managed to get information about Evie and Lil from Hell's Accounting Department and to figure out that the prophesies meant they'd be in London and that it will all happen today. He hopes that he'll find the right clue to figure out more, for the prophesies to lead him to exactly the right spot. 
> 
> Adam promised to be by Evie and Lil's side when it all went down. He's decided to bring along the Them.
> 
> Evie and Lil contacted Ethan and Mia and told them everything.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day of the Big One, Early Morning**

**Liberty lavender farm and bed and breakfast**

‘Look,’ Newton said as he walked into the living room holding out the index cards that Anathema had painstakingly written the individual prophesies on like a fan, ‘pick a card. It’ll tell us where we need to go.’

Anathema paused in her relentless pacing and smiled. She nodded.

Morgan frowned, looking up from her foldable screen where she had been reading the latest comments on the prophesies, desperately searching for a clue, ‘Why would the card I pick be the right one?’

‘C’mon, Morgan, trust me,’ Newton said, waving the cards around and waggling his eyebrows.

Anathema’s gaze slipped from Newton to Morgan, ‘It’s worked before.’

Morgan shrugged and picked a card. She cleared her throat and read the prophesy aloud,

‘And ye the risen two

Shalle live where the double red carriages ride

And the great eye sees all

Fortie days and nights…

Hm…’ she chewed her bottom lip, ‘It’s the one about London.’

‘Well, there we are,’ Anathema said decisively, ‘we go to London and continue on from there,’ she smiled fondly at Newton, ‘get the car, darling. You’re driving us to London.’

Newton grinned as he fetched his jacket and car keys, delighted to have been of service.

‘And what happens when we get to London?’ Morgan asked as she followed her parents out the door, ‘then what do we do?’

Anathema winked, ‘we pick another card.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day of the Big One, Early Morning**

**The Orchard Retirement Village and Aged Care Home, London**

Glenn frowned, chess piece still in his hand, fingers twirling it slightly as he focused intently on trying to understand was Mia was saying, ‘Wait a second. You’re saying that our Evie was raised in some kind of cult, the cult leaders are coming for her today and if Evie doesn’t do what they ask they are going to destroy the world?’ Glenn shook his head, ‘Mia, you’ve gotta go to the police.’

‘No,’ Mia said with a frustrated sigh, ‘the police can’t help. You aren’t listening. It is like a cult, yes, but Evie and her sister Lil were raised in Heaven and Hell. Like, literal Heaven and Hell. The beings who raised them, they are angels and demons. Real ones.’

Glenn shook his head, ‘Well, I’m sure they say that and maybe Evie and Lil believe it. They’re a cult, aren’t they? That’s the kind of nonsense cult leaders say.’

Mia shook her head and rubbed her face. Why couldn’t he understand? She turned to Fiona, ‘you believe me, don’t you, Fi? Evie, she isn’t entirely human. She’s, I don’t know, half-angel or something. She was raised in Heaven and Hell. Actual angels and demons are coming to judge the world. They wanted Evie and Lil to fix it. And if Evie and Lil can’t fix it to their satisfaction today then they are going to destroy it. I know it sounds unbelievable, ridiculous. But it is true, I swear. Please, listen to me.’

Fiona’s eyebrows twisted as she listened carefully. She could hear Glenn snorting in disbelief in the background. She remembered Evie’s remarkable ability to digest great tomes of religious scripture quickly and efficiently, she recalled the strange out-of-place things she’d say, stranger still in light of her clear brilliant intelligence, and then she remembered Evie saying that angels too have done terrible things in the name of God. Maybe Evie had seen those terrible things for herself. Maybe.

Fiona nodded as a lifetime of earnest Christian faith came into sharp and terrifying clarity, all the little things that had been niggling at her about her religion and causing her to puzzle and wonder and doubt were resolved in one breathtaking leap of insight. It made sense. It felt right. The angels knew nothing more about God than humans and _the angels_ were the ones in charge of Heaven. Heaven was just as imperfect and corrupt as any human church. To Fiona, someone who had felt the the full brunt of imperfection within the human church and yet continued to have faith, it all made perfect sense. She gasped, ‘yes, Mia, oh yes, I believe you,’ she swallowed hard, ‘but, Mia, you’ve said nothing of God.’

Mia chewed her bottom lip, ‘well, Evie and Lil know no more about the nature of God than we do, I’m afraid. They’ve never met her.’

Fiona nodded quickly and smiled as her insight was confirmed.

‘But Evie, at least, she has faith. She loves God and she believes that her mission, her real mission, comes from her,’ Mia shifted a little as she came to a decision, ‘and I think, I think maybe so do I.’

Fiona’s smile instantly widened, ‘me, too, Mia. I think I do too.’

Glenn snorted, ‘right, so we’re all going to drink the Kool-Aid, are we?’

Fiona shook her head decisively and tutted in frustration. ‘No, Glenn,’ she answered forcefully, ‘We are going to stop the people who are giving out the Kool-Aid, you twat. Some very powerful people are going to try to hurt our Evie and we are going to stop them that’s all you need to know.’

Glenn shrugged and threw the chess piece onto the board, ‘well, then what are we waiting for?’

Fiona stood, taking control, ‘Round up as many people as you can, Glenn and Mia. I am going to get my guitar.’

‘What for?’ Mia asked with a confused frown.

‘It’s a protest, isn’t it?’ Fiona smiled widely, a little gleam in her eyes. Fiona was, after all, a musician. She knew the magic and power that could be found in music. She knew that a steady beat could unite a group of disparate people and breathe life into them, just as surely as a steady heartbeat could keep a person alive, ‘Every protest needs an anthem and I know just the one. It’s an oldie but it’s a goodie.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day of the Big One, Late Morning**

**A.Z. Fell and Co. Purveyor of Books to the Gentry, Soho, London**

Crowley sat on the couch in the Bookshop. He frowned over his foldable screen, unfolded to maximum size and propped up on a coffee table covered with books (naturally, Aziraphale covered every surface with books). He watched the multiple social media feeds and newsfeeds scrolling across it, his universal device searching, relentlessly searching—pushed to it’s absolute limits by demonic and angelic expectation—for certain specific key words.

‘The end begins where mankind imagines,’ Aziraphale said, repeating the prophesy as he rubbed his hands together and paced.

‘I know, Azraiphale,’ Crowley said, biting his lip, his right leg bouncing up and down, ‘I’ve already set the search up.’

‘In remembering the garden, they return to the garden,’ Aziraphale continued, pacing up and down next to the bookshelves, ‘that’s a reference to Eden, naturally, but what does it actually mean? Will it happen in an actual garden? Could it be that literal?’

Crowley snorted, leg still bouncing rapidly. Aziraphale was obviously talking for his own benefit at this point so Crowley just let him get on with it.

‘Wisdom of elders, best friend by thy side, mankind takes its stand and waits…’ Aziraphale completed the prophesy. He stopped his pacing and looked to Crowley. Then he frowned over the screen and all the scrolling text, photos, videos, none of which he understood. This looked so much less reliable, so much less certain, so much more ephemeral than the solid weight of a book. Azraiphale clicked his tongue, ‘are you sure we’ll get the right hint from this?’

‘Am I sure?’ Crowley growled, ‘No! ‘Course ‘m not sure. ‘m just trying to find you what you need to work this damn thing out and…’ Crowley cut himself off as he saw the thing, just the thing come across the screen. He laughed. A great, big rapturous laugh, ‘Ha, ha! This is it!’ Crowley tapped the screen and brought a particular video up to dominate the screen. He tapped it again and the volume kicked in.

Aziraphale put his glasses on and took a seat next to Crowley, squinting over the screen, ‘that’s St James Park, isn’t it?’

‘Ah-uh,’ Crowley agreed with a grin.

‘Plenty of elderly gentlemen and ladies, well, that’s the elders,’ Aziraphale said with a raise of his eyebrows.

‘Who’d prolly hate to be called elderly gentlemen and ladies,’ Crowley imitated Azriaphale’s tone mockingly.

‘And quite a lot of dogs, well, that’s the best friend reference, isn’t it?’ Aziraphale continued, ignoring Crowley.

‘Makes sense, angel,’ Crowley nodded, ‘Man’s best friend ‘n all.’

‘Oh, and the song,’ Aziraphale listened, with a little frown, ‘the song seems to use the word imagine.’

Crowley sighed and rubbed his face, ‘Do not— _do not_ — pretend you don’t know who John Lennon was, angel. You lived in London in the 1960s! I know you know who John Lennon was.’

Aziraphale tutted and wiggled a little, ‘Fine,’ he coughed, ‘I do know,’ he sniffed, ‘I always preferred Paul McCartney.’

Crowley snorted, ‘You would.’

‘Oh, look at the two young ladies at the front,’ Aziraphale leaned forward, excited and pointing at the screen, ‘Oh, they are twins, identical twins. That’s them! Eve and Lilith. It must be!’

Crowley squinted down at the screen, ‘Hm. They look ordinary enough.’

‘So did Adam,’ Aziraphale answered with a little raise of his eyebrows.

‘Hm. And Jesus, I suppose,’ Crowley agreed, ‘just like any other carpenter from Galilee. Whip-smart, of course, but you wouldn’t know that at a glance.’

‘Quite. Well, we’ve got our location, dear boy,’ Aziraphale said leaping up, ‘lets rock and roll,’ he added with a little glimmer in his eyes and an excited wiggle.

Crowley’s face twisted into a look of horror, ‘No, Aziraphale, just no.’

‘What?’ Aziraphale paused, confused, ‘That’s it, isn’t it? St James Park?’

‘Yeah yeah, that’s it. Just…’ Crowley sighed, ‘Don’t ever, ever, use that expression again. You are like a century too late.’

Aziraphale muttered something to himself about the phrase being appropriate considering. Crowley ignored him and they strode out of the Bookshop towards the Bentley and the end of the world.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day of the Big One, Late Morning**

**A flat in London**

Evie and Lil ate their breakfast quickly and silently, both focused on the day ahead. They had woken to find a note from Ethan and Mia. Something about needing to get back up—whatever that meant—and meeting them there.

It had felt good to unburden themselves to Ethan and Mia. That was undoubtedly true. But it hadn’t yielded any actual solutions. The situation remained hopeless. With so few choices open to them, Ethan and Mia had agreed that they needed to focus on the choices that they could make, starting with the location of the confrontation.

Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub would have to return to Evie and Lil to pronounce their final verdict. That much they knew. This meant that Evie and Lil could choose where that announcement would take place, by deciding where they themselves would be. They could choose where the end of the world would begin. It was a small choice. Tiny. Unlikely to make a difference. But it was their choice. And so, they made it.

As Evie and Mia left their flat, a sense of strength of calm came to them. They walked as one to St James Park, past joggers, mums pushing babies in prams, Londeners walking to work, tourists taking photos and children playing. They walked and walked until they found Lil’s favourite spot: the place where she’d first discovered fun. Lil smiled as she remembered Molly coaxing her out of her shell. It felt like aeons ago. She remembered what she had thought at the time: that she’d never felt such simple happiness in Heaven.

Evie smiled at Lil and took her hand.

Lil smiled back.

The sunlight was dappled, broken by the leaves in the trees above them. Lil kicked off her shoes and let her feet feel the clean, crisp grass underneath. Evie did the same, closing her eyes and letting the dappled sunlight warm her.

‘This,’ Lil whispered, ‘ _This_ was meant to be.’ She sighed.

‘Hm,’ Evie hummed in agreement, letting the sunshine settle deep into her bones, ‘It isn’t a solution, but it sure feels like a good place to start.’

They stood like that for a long time. Finally, Lil squeezed Evie’s hand, ‘Do you think they are coming?’

Evie knew at once who she meant. Not Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelzebub. They would come. That was certain. Undoubtable. There was no need to question it. No, Lil meant Ethan and Mia. Would Ethan and Mia come? But, ah, that was simple too as far as Evie was concerned. They’d said that they would come and so, yes, they would. She smiled, ‘Yes, Lil, Ethan and Mia are coming.’

Lil nodded tightly, biting at her bottom lip. They had to come. Surely, they’d come. Lil didn’t want to face it alone.

A loud bark rang through the park. A loud _familiar_ bark rang through the park. Lil gasped in shock as she recognised the sound and laughed. Molly bounded right up to Lil, leaping onto her, knocking her over onto the cool, crisp grass and licking at her face enthusiastically with warm and wet licks.

‘Mol!’ Lil laughed, trying to push her off, ‘geroff!’

Molly fell back, sitting next to Lil. She panted as she stared up at Lil with big brown eyes. Lil chuckled and stood back up, dusting herself off, ‘what are you doing here, Mol?’

Molly continued to stare at Lil, with haunting intelligence, waiting for Lil to figure it out. There was, after all, only one person who’d realise that what Lil needed, in that moment, was a certain clever Labrador. ‘Oh, Ethan brought you, didn’t he? You’re the back-up.’

Molly woofed and wagged her tail, seemingly delighted to have her role in the proceedings recognised and acknowledged.

‘Not just her!’ Ethan called out from across the park.

‘Lil,’ Evie gasped, ‘look!’

Ethan and Mia were leading a whole pack. There were residents from The Orchard, grey-haired and blinking, some using walking sticks, some even in wheelchairs pushed by nurses and wellness facilitators. Glenn and Fiona were leading that part of the crowd, right up the front, Fiona with her guitar slung over her back. Fiona waved to Evie and Evie waved back. Then there were the dogs and dog-lovers. Most of Ethan and Lil’s regular customers were there and they had all bought their dogs with them. There were also several people neither Evie nor Lil recognised: general park-goers who’d joined the crowd. Some of the residents from the The Orchard were carrying hastily made signs proclaiming sentiments like ‘We support Evie and Lil’ and ‘Save the world’. One of the sign writers had clearly taken inspiration from the Bible, with one sign declaring, ‘And the greatest of these is love Corinthians 13:13’, another, ‘A new command I give you: love one another John 13:34’ and yet another ‘Whoever has ears, let them hear Matthew 11:15’.

Evie and Lil’s eyes welled in tears as the crowd approached. Not just Ethan and Mia. A crowd. How had they made so many friends? How was it that so many were ready and willing to stand with them against Heaven and Hell? Tears broke free and streamed down their faces.

‘You brought back-up,’ Lil choked out, wiping at her tears with the back of her hand.

‘We brought back-up,’ Ethan said with a grin. He was delighted to have gotten it so very right.

‘You are far from alone,’ Mia added, hand caressing Evie’s face, gently wiping away her tears and kissing her softly, ‘you see that don’t you? You are far from alone.’

Evie nodded and mouthed a grateful, ‘thank-you.’

Molly barked loudly as if the emphasise the point.

Fiona turned to the crowd and shouted, ‘Are we ready to save the world?’

The crowd cheered.

‘I can’t hear you!’ Fiona shouted, hand up to her ear, ‘I said, are you ready to save the world?!’

The crowd sheered louder still, a wave of sound, of good-will poured over Evie and Lil, strengthening them, fortifying them for what was to come.

Evie shook her head, tears in her eyes, and said, ‘thank-you for coming everyone, but we really don’t know what we are doing.’

Mia smiled, taking Evie’s hand and squeezing, ‘Evie, my love, none of us know how this will end. But we are here, and we are doing what we think is right and we are doing it out of love. And that’s the only thing, _the only thing_ , that’s ever made a scrap of difference.’

Evie nodded, wiping away her tears and squeezing Mia’s hand back, ‘you’re right. Let’s face it together.’

‘Together!’ Fiona cried out, punching the air. The crowd cheered loudly, some of the elderly Orchard residents adding to the din with wolf-whistles.

‘Wow, you’ve really gone all out!’ Adam called out to Evie and Lil as he strode forward through the park, leading a crowd of his own. The Them flanked him, Pepper on the right, Brain and Wensleydale on the left. And with the Them were their families. Pepper’s wife, Phoebe stood at her side holding hands with their daughter Poppy. Poppy smiled at the crowd, her eyes wide with excitement. She looked just like what she was: a little firecracker. Brian approached hand in hand with his own wife, Chloe. She waved at the crowd. She wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing here today but it was clear that it was important to Brian and Brian, well, he was always willing to go to the ends of the Earth for anything that mattered to Chloe. And so, here she was, determined to do everything she could. Wensleydale had a boy on either side of him. Both boys were scrubbed clean, immaculately dressed in very grown-up looking trousers and perfect little cardigans. They were also both wearing glasses. They looked like two perfect little replicas of their father.

‘Adam!’ Evie and Lil called out as one, breaking into wide and delighted smiles.

Adam strode forward and threw his arms around both Evie and Lil at once, squeezing them tightly. They squeezed back.

Adam pulled away and grinned, ‘Now, remember, this is your show today. I’m here for you both, no matter what, alright?’

‘Thanks, Adam,’ Lil said with a sigh, ‘We appreciate it.’

Adam remembered what it had meant, all those years ago to have an angel and a demon willing to stand at his side, to support him no matter what he decided, no matter how things turned out. He smiled, ‘I know you do.’

‘This is Mia,’ Evie gestured towards Mia at her side. Mia smiled as Adam shook her hand and said, ‘delighted to meet you.’

‘Pleasure’s all mine, I’m sure,’ Adam replied.

‘And this is Ethan,’ Lil jumped in.

Ethan shook Adam’s hand, ‘Good to meet you.’

Adam nodded, ‘same, same,’ he sighed, looking around at the crowd, ‘And you’ve got a whole gang too!’ He laughed and waved, ‘Hullo, everyone! Room for more supporters?’

The crowd cheered.

Lil laughed and shook her head, ‘it seems we do. Bit of a surprise to us, to be honest.’

Adam chuckled, ‘You know, it often is, I think. Well, before it all begins, let me introduce you to mine,’ Adam smiled as he gestured behind him, ‘This is Pepper, her wife Pheobe and her daughter Poppy, and here’s Brain and his wife Chloe, and this is Wensleydale and his kids Harry and Oliver. We are The Them.’

The Them waved at Lil and Evie, calling out greetings and encouragement.

‘Well, Evie and Lil have a world to save,’ Adam said commandingly to the Them, ‘let’s find our place in the crowd.’

With waves and smiles the Them dissolved into the crowd supporting Evie and Lil. The crowd parted for them and they found their spots, clustered around their leader, Adam. Excited moments ticked by, the air buzzing with a tension, the world poised and ready, and the crowd ready with it. The crowd settled into an easy camaraderie. Some people remained standing, but others got comfortable, flopping out on the grass as they waited for something to happen. People talked, the chatter spreading the idea that powerful beings were going to appear. Angels, perhaps. Or demons. Or maybe even God himself. 

Fiona smiled to herself, sensing that the right moment had arrived. She pulled her guitar around to her front and checked the tuning. She made a few quick adjustments and nodded, satisfied with the sound. Then she stepped forward to the front of the crowd. Fiona was a musician. She knew that if you stood commandingly at the front of a crowd with a musicial instrument and waited like you had the right to silence then silence would come. It came. Fiona smiled, she nodded to the crowd and without introducing the song at all she began to play. The introduction rang out and many in the crowd instantly recognised the tune. As the first verse began, Fiona sung loud and strong, in a weathered voice that had once been breathtakingly beautiful. Although her voice wasn’t quite what it used to be, she could still sing in tune and with good volume, with all the years of practice of an experienced performer. Fiona could still give a fantastic performance. She sung, _‘Imagine there’s no heaven…’_

Evie stared at Fiona, her mouth falling open. What was Fiona singing? Of course, there was a Heaven. Evie and Lil had spent half their lives there. Heaven was about to rain down terror upon the world. Heaven was coming to destroy them all. That was the whole point. Fiona just winked at her. Adam laughed loudly in the crowd. Perfect, he thought. Oh, that’s just perfect.

Glenn snorted, shook his head and joined in with the next line, _‘It’s easy if you try.’_

‘C’mon everybody!’ Fiona shouted.

The song spread quickly through the crowd everyone joining in as best they could, some of them fudging the words if they weren’t sure. But enough of members of the crowd knew the lyrics, and Fiona’s voice rang out loud and strong. Evie and Lil just listened, in shock. They didn’t know the words and they were utterly bamboozled by them anyway.

_‘No hell below us, above us, only sky…’_

Lil’s eyes darted about, trying to understand. She looked to Ethan, but Ethan just smiled at her and kept singing. She looked to Adam. Adam winked and grinned as he sung out loud and strong. What were they all playing at? There was a Hell. Adam knew that. He was the Antichrist for fuck’s sake. There was a Hell and Hell was coming for them.

_‘Imagine all the people living for today… Ah-uh-ah…’_

Evie and Lil listened in stunned wonder as the song continued.

_‘Imagine there’s no countries,_

_It isn’t hard to do,_

_Nothing to kill or die for,_

_And no religion too…’_

The crowd swayed as they sang, hands drifting into the air and swaying back and forth as one. Gradually, slowly, an idea began to emerge in Evie and Lil’s minds. Gradually, slowly, they began to understand.

‘Is it just me…’ Lil whispered to Evie, leaning in close to be heard above the song, ‘Or does that sound like, I mean just a bit like…’ she swallowed hard, the thought still forming, still settling and taking form.

The crowd continued to sing, swaying back and forth as one, _‘Imagine all the people living life in peace…’_

Evie smiled as the song continued. No war. No countries. No possessions. No greed or hunger. The world living in peace. The world living as one. Oh. Oh. It was perfect. So perfect. This was it. This was the answer. This was the solution. And it had been staring them in the face all along. Evie choked out, ‘Oh, Lil, yes, you are right, it sounds a bit like…’ she swallowed hard as the idea, as the startling conclusion slipped into crystal clear clarity, ‘it sounds like _Eden_. The good of Eden, anyway. It sounds just like the Eden the Almighty intended. I think, I think maybe, I think it sounds like…’

‘They’ve never forgotten,’ Lil finished in a rush, as it clicked into place for her too, ‘They’ve never forgotten! It has been inside them all along.’

 _‘You may say I’m a dreamer,’_ led by Fiona, the crowd sang, loud and strong,

_‘But I’m not the only one,_

_I hope some day you’ll join us,_

_And the world will live as one…’_

Evie shook her head, eyes wide with wonder, ‘The Kingdom of God is in you. This is what Jesus meant! This is what he meant, Lil. Humanity just didn’t leave Eden. They _took Eden with them_. They took Eden with them!’


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> The day has come. Evie and Lil stand in St James park with Ethan, Mia and a whole crowd of friends, including Adam and The Them. They realise that the key to fixing the world is within humanity, and has been all along.
> 
> Aziraphale and Crowley are on their way.... And so are Anathema, Newton and Morgan....

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day of the Big One, about noon**

**St James Park, London**

The crowd continued to sing loudly, their voices echoing through the park. People paused as they walked by, taking a moment in their busy lives to watch the spectacle. Some took photos or videos using their UDs, sharing them social media. The videos spread quickly, and soon people all over the world were talking about what was happening in St James Park. Was it as spontaneous as it appeared to be? Or was it staged? Was it a protest? And, if so, what were the key issues? People speculated and wondered and waited. What would happen next?

Some of the passerby's paused longer and longer and eventually settled down to stay, sitting on benches or on the grass to watch, curiously. Some even joined the crowd, raising their own voices, joining in with the song.

Fiona led the crowd in several popular, uplifting songs, but she kept coming back to Imagine. Evie and Lil had joined in from the third rendition, two repetitions being enough for them to know the words. The crowd had long since lost count of how many renditions of Imagine they had sung when lightning struck the ground in front of Evie and Lil with a loud crack and the Archangel Gabriel appeared in front of them. He cleared his throat and smoothed down his suit, carefully adjusting his lavender tie.

The crowd instantly hushed, forced into a stunned silence, their voice stolen in a moment. This was it. This was what they’d been waiting for. The original crowd, the people who knew Evie or Lil had known that they were all waiting for powerful beings to arrive. Well, a powerful being had, indeed, shown up. Travelling by lightning bolt, apparently. But who was it? Was it an angel? Was it a demon? Was it an alien? An extraterrestrial from some far away planet? Was it one of the good people, a fairy? Or—and this was truly awesome to even contemplate—was it God himself? Ethan and Mia shuffled closer to Evie and Lil, standing directly behind them, giving them what support they could.

Adam swallowed hard and Pepper gripped his hand and squeezed. Adam and The Them did not wonder who it was. Adam and The Them recognised him. They recognised him at once. He was one of the two beings who had tried to bully Adam into destroying the world.

‘But it was a game,’ Brian said, eyes darting from Gabriel to Adam. He chewed his lip nervously, ‘Adam, it was a game.’

Adam shook his head. His mouth was suddenly dry, and he had to cough to clear it. He shook his head again, ‘Nah, I told you. It wasn’t a game. Everything that happened, it was all real.’

‘I thought you were joking when you said that,’ Wensleydale said, with a frown, ‘Thought you were just having a laugh.’

Adam shook his head, ‘When have I said something like that for a joke?’

Wendsleydale raised a single eyebrow.

Adam shrugged and grinned, ‘well alright, all the time. But I meant this.’

‘Brain,’ Chloe whispered, forehead creased in confusion, ‘what’s happening, love?’

‘Mummy,’ Poppy said, tugging at Pepper’s shirt, ‘how did the man ride the lightning bolt?’

Pepper swallowed hard as she looked down to her precious daughter. She looked back to Adam, and sucked in a deep shaking breath, ‘Adam, I remember him. He’s dangerous. Wensleydale and I, well, we’ve brought our kids.’

Adam snorted, ‘Pepper, if this fails the whole world burns. Anyway, who better to stand up to this stuff than a kid?’

‘Adam…’ Pepper began, her voice tinged with the rippling angry power of maternal instinct.

Adam sighed, ‘Pepper, Wensleydale, you know I’d never risk your kids, closest thing I have to kids of my own. What’s about to happen is dangerous, yes. But it’s dangerous for the whole world. With what’s about to go down there’s nowhere safer than here. Here they’re with Evie and Lil. Here they’re with me.’

‘Yeah mum,’ Poppy said loudly, her face twisting into an outraged expression, the same outraged expression that Pepper herself often wore when talking about climate change or the patriarchy, ‘m not scared! And Uncle Adam will save us!’

Pepper looked down at her daughter as her wife’s hand squeezed her shoulder reassuringly. She looked to her wife and Phoebe nodded. Pepper smiled and nodded in return. Alright. If Adam said they were safest here, then they were safest here.. If the world was about to be torn to shreds by powerful beings, it made sense to be close to the most powerful human being she knew. And besides, she trusted Adam.

The crowd were still reeling from the shock of Gabriel’s appearance when another strange being appeared, this time growing out of the ground like a bizarre human-like plant caught on time-lapse. 

Beelezebub nodded to Gabriel, brushing dirt off herself. Gabriel nodded back. For today, Beelezebub deliberately presented herself in the most positive light to the humans, rather like how she’d presented herself at Tadfield airbase all those years ago. The crowd gasped, the second appearance of a strange being breaking their shocked silence as they re-discovered their voices and began to whisper to each other with trepidation and excitement.

Evie and Lil could feel the fear and awe of the crowd behind them, like it was a living thing. It was one thing to bravely face angels and demons. It was quite another for angels and demons to actually turn up. For a moment, Evie and Lil could appreciate just how strange their childhoods had been, raised in Heaven and Hell, Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub overseeing everything.

Gabriel and Beelezebub stepped forward together. Gabriel’s eyes met Evie and Lil’s and he smiled smugly, ‘Eve, Lilith…oh and you’ve brought some friends, how lovely,’ he cast his eye quickly over the crowd, his nose crinkling in disapproval.

The crowd stared right back, caught up again in a fresh a bubble of silence with the shock of Gabriel speaking. None of them wanted to miss a single word. That is, apart from Glenn. Glenn swallowed hard and whispered to Fiona, ‘They’re a literal angel and demon, aren’t they?’

Fiona indulgently smiled at her old and dear friend, ‘Now you’re getting it.’

‘Shit,’ was all the reply Glenn could muster. He’d never been much of a believer. This wasn’t at all something he expected to have happen. Aliens would have made more sense. But here they were, and Glenn was always willing to take in the evidence before him and adapt. Even to something this shocking.

Gabriel raised himself to full height, turning his head from side to side, and adopting a commanding stance. He cleared his throat and began in a miraculously booming voice, ‘Eve and Lilith you have been given the task…’ but his prepared speech was cut off unexpectedly by a loud shriek from Beelzebub.

‘Adam!’ Beelzebub shrieked as she recognised the Antichrist in the crowd. She pointed, mouth falling open, ‘That’s Adam! That’s the Antichrist!’

Adam grinned and waved at Beelzebub, with the embarrassed but determined-to-be-friendly air of someone running into an old teacher while browsing sex toys at an adult shop. The Them instinctively moved closer to Adam in a rush of protectiveness.

‘Hullo,’ Adam called out politely, ‘Nice to see you again. I recognise the,’ he pointed to his own head, ‘fly hat? Well, whatever it is. It suits you.’

‘What are _you_ doing here, Adam?’ Beelezebub asked, stepping forward a fraction, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Adam stood tall, ‘supporting some friends, actually.’

Beelezebub frowned, her eyes flicking from Adam to Evie and Lil and back again.

Gabriel shook his head in frustration and turned to Beelezebub with a little discontented smile that made it look like he was regretfully sucking on a lemon, ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. Who cares why he’s here? Let’s get on with it.’

Beelezebub shrugged, and replied with annoyance, ‘Fine. Get on with it then, your little speech,’ but she added in a murmur just loud enough for Gabriel to hear, ‘Just thought it was weird for the Antichrist to be here.’

‘Well, you should probably keep better track of him anyway,’ Gabriel replied sotto voce his lavender eyes flashing.

Beelezebub rolled her eyes and looked away.

Gabriel turned back to Evie and Lil. He cleared his throat and once again returned to his loud booming voice, gesturing widely, ‘Eve and Lilith…’ but his voice trailed off as he caught sight of someone hurrying along the path, rapidly approaching the crowd. His eyes narrowed as he recognised that someone at once. He’d know that someone anywhere. He growled menacingly, ‘Aziraphale…’

Beelezebub followed Gabriel’s line of sight, instantly recognising not just he traitorous angel but also the demon accompanying him. She snorted with contempt and pointed to them both, ‘And Crowley! The traitor. What are _you_ doing here?’

Aziraphale and Crowley hurried across the park to join the very edge of the crowd.

The crowd looked from Gabriel and Beelezebub to the the two newcomers and back, trying to work out exactly how they fit into the picture. Adam smiled widely. He’d know those two anywhere! Well, he thought to himself, their arrival was a good omen, surely!

Lil leaned in close to Evie and whispered, ‘Traitor? Are _they_ the traitors?’

Evie looked back with wide eyes and shrugged. Evie and Lil had been hearing about the traitors their whole lives, little snatches of stories here and there, always spoken in hushed angry tones, and sometimes with just a hint of something that Evie and Lil always suspected was fear. Not that they’d ever be foolish enough to suggest it. Angels and demons did not like admitting to fear. But within the little snatches of stories that they had heard over the years, they’d learned something of the traitors and the gist of it was this: the traitors had stood against Heaven and Hell and now they were something else, something new. The new strangers hurrying up the path to join the crowd didn’t look that fearsome, Lil and Evie thought to themselves.

‘Traitor ‘s such an ugly word, Lord Beelezebub,’ Crowley drawled as he joined the edge of the crowd, slowing down from a run, to stroll the final steps with deliberate cool.

‘As I said before, all the other words I have for you are worse,’ Beelzebub answered her voice dripping with venom.

‘Aziraphale,’ Gabriel said with a sneer, ‘What are _you_ doing here?’

Aziraphale held up his right hand for a moment, finding his breath after the run from the Bentley, ‘Gabriel,’ he puffed out, ‘we’re here to, well, to protect the world.’ He smoothed out his vest.

Gabriel shook his head, his nose crinkling up in disgust, ‘Pathetic. Still as soft as ever.’

‘Adam,’ Pepper whispered in Adam’s ear, ‘weren’t they there, too, you know, last time?’

Adam smiled as he whispered back, ‘yeah they were,’ he waved his hand up high, over the crowd, ‘Hello again! Long time, no see. Do you always show up when the world needs saving then?’

‘Oh,’ Aziraphale gasped, as he caught sight of the man calling out and waving to them in amongst the crowd, ‘Oh, Good Lord! That’s Adam! Adam Young!’

Crowley’s eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses and his mouth fell open as he recognised him, ‘so it is,’ he whispered.

Azraiphale waved enthusiastically, ‘Hello, Adam! I hope life’s been treating you alright. Dear me, you’ve quite grown up.’

‘Can’t complain,’ Adam answered with a grin, ‘yeah definitely aged a bit since I saw you two last. You two don’t look any older though!’

‘Hello, Antichirst!’ Crowley drawled, ‘My, you’ve grown. I delivered you, you know. Well, not delivered delivered. Handed you over.’

‘Is that right?’ Adam replied with a laugh, ‘Only I’m not really the Antichrist anymore, I’m afraid.’

‘No,’ Crowley replied proudly, ‘no you’re not. Well, ‘m not really a demon anymore.’

‘Is that right?’ Adam answered, ‘You know I wondered…’

‘Adam!’ a new voice called out from across the park, high above the conversation.

Adam turned and squinted and then he laughed as he recognised her, ‘Anathema!’

Anathema ran to Adam, Newt and Morgan following quickly behind her. She threw her arms around Adam and then hugged each of The Them in turn.

‘Book girl!’ Crowley laughed, nudging Aziraphale excitedly, ‘Hey, ‘Ziraphale, its book girl!’

‘Yes, dear, I can see that,’ Aziraphale answered, fussing nervously with his bowtie.

‘Wow, you’ve all grown,’ Anathema laughed, looking at Adam, Pepper, Brain and Wensleydale in turn and remembering a summer long ago when she’d been young and they’d been children. She shook her head as if to clear it of the past and gestured to Morgan, ‘this is my daughter, Morgan.’

Morgan smiled as she met each of The Them and their families, Newt helping with the introductions.

‘Hey, Anathema, Newt,’ Adam said, ‘you’ll never guess who else is here!’ He pointed towards Aziraphale and Crowley.

Anathema followed Adam’s gesture and spied Aziraphale and Crowley standing uncomfortably at the edge of the crowd, ‘You! You’re here too!’

Aziraphale chuckled, ‘Afraid so. Another book of prophesy, my dear?’

‘Yes,’ Anathema replied, ‘I burned it. Years ago. But she knew I’d do that, of course, and sent it to my daughter too.’

‘Ah,’ Aziraphale nodded, understanding instantly that Morgan must have been the one to put the prophesy on the internet, where Crowley had found it. How typical of her generation. Still, it was quite fortunate indeed or else Aziraphale and Crowley would not be here at all. His heart cracked a little in sympathy as he realised how difficult it would have been for Anathema to find out that her daughter had been bequeathed the second book of prophesy. Aziraphale knew what it meant to be enslaved by someone else’s rules. And he knew was it meant to break free of them. To discover that your own child had become ensnared in the same trap, after trying so hard to keep her free…it would have been difficult, ‘Tricky,’ Aziraphale answered, ‘Still, congratulations,’ he beamed sincerely, ‘You have a lovely family.’

‘We’re very proud of her,’ Newton said, wrapping an arm around Morgan as Anathema grinned.

‘Hello,’ Morgan said with wave, ‘I’m Morgan.’

‘Hello, dear,’ Aziraphale replied, ‘I’m Aziraphale and this is Crowley.’

The crowd watched all of this unfold with very little comprehension but a great deal of fascination. They understood next to nothing of what was going on, only catching snippets of meaning. Something about traitors, and something about a prophesy? But it was certainly a spectacular show and they were riveted.

‘Well, this is all very touching, I’m sure, but can we return to the matter at hand?’ Gabriel growled, smiling his smarmy smile.

Everyone turned back to face Gabriel and Beelezebub, still standing at the front of the crowd.

Gabriel cleared his throat decisively and began his prepared speech for a third time, his voice booming unnaturally throughout the park, echoing off the trees, ‘Eve and Lilith, you were given the task of fixing the world. The Almighty created the world in seven days, and you were given seven days to fix it. Have you accomplished your...’

Suddenly, the Earth began to shake under their feet. Everyone instinctively reached out for support, some finding another person to clutch onto and others clutching helplessly at the air. A few people in the crowd fell to the ground. Others quickly turned to ensure that the elderly amongst them were okay. Fortunately, they all were.

‘Whoa,’ Newton yelled, eyes wide with surprise, ‘what’s that? An earthquake?’

‘We don’t have earthquakes in England, Dad,’ Morgan quickly replied, correcting him.

Newt snorted at the irony, remembering a similar conversation between himself and Anathema long ago.

‘What now!’ Gabriel yelled, his hands curling into fists by his side. He turned to Beelezebub, mouth curled in wrath, ‘this isn’t one of your lot, is it?’

Beelezebub shook her head, her forehead twisted in confusion. Something metaphysical was happening, something spiritual. She could sense it. She could sense it clearly. This wasn’t natural. But it didn’t feel like either Heaven or Hell. If it wasn’t Heaven and it wasn’t Hell, then what was it? What other power existed that could move the very Earth?

The Earth shook and quaked and then, suddenly it was still. A moment later, with a loud pop well over two hundred thousand spirits appeared. The spirits materialised, visible to all, in a half circle around the human crowd, floating behind them as they faced Beelezebub and Gabriel to the front. The humans gasped and a wave of murmuring and muttering spread through the crowd as they tried to make sense of this latest turn of events. Not just an angel and a demon! Ghosts! Spirits from the beyond! But that meant there was an afterlife, didn’t it? And why were they here— to help save the world or to help destroy it?

‘Oh,’ Crowley grinned proudly, giving Aziraphale a wink, ‘s our lot.’

The spirit of Arthur Sinclair floated forward and waved, as spirits can wave, to Aziraphale and Crowley and then to the entire crowd, ‘Hello, everyone! Apologies! We didn’t realise that a mass spiritual travel event would have those kinds of effects. That was our first time doing it,’ he turned to Aziraphale and Crowley, ‘it turns out we are connected to you both—metaphysically speaking—and so you make a very effective anchor indeed. So effective we could transport all of us here, to you, instantly with the ability to be completely visible to all and with full potential for communication. We’re using you as a kind of conduit, you see.’

Aziraphale nodded, impressed by the reasoning, eyebrows rising high, ‘that makes sense.’

‘Doesn’t it? DaVinci thought of it,’ Arthur replied as he continued to float about near Aziraphale and Crowley, on the edge of the crowd.

Crowley snorted in amusement, ‘Course he did.’ That meant, Crowley figured that DaVinci himself had probably foreseen the whole earthquake thing but had simply gotten too caught up in the excitement of the moment to think to mention it. He was like that.

‘Look, I don’t even know who you lot are,’ Gabriel said giving up his position at the front of the crowd to stalk closer to Arthur’s ghost furiously, ‘but you are clearly dead, so you can sod off back to Heaven or Hell, whichever was your final destination.’

Arthur floated forward, smiling, completely ignoring Gabriel’s venom and speaking loudly enough to address everyone present, ‘How rude of me not to introduce myself to you all. I am Arthur Sinclair. I am the elected official representative for the third final destination for human souls: The Garden of the Faithless Good.’

‘What?’ Gabriel said, his mouth hanging open in surprise and a wrinkle of irritation appearing on his forehead, ‘ _third_ destination? There are only two final destinations for human souls: Heaven and Hell. I mean there was that purgatory experiment for awhile but that was never a _final_ destination anyway.’

‘Oh,’ Beelezebub sighed as it all clicked into place in her mind. She stepped forward, and pointed towards the ghosts, ‘I know who this lot are.’

Gabriel turned around and gestured with wide open hands, ‘well?’

‘Yeszzzss, I know,’ Beelezebub said putting it together, ‘some two thousand souls were supposedly returned to Heaven recently. A much higher number than ever before, I’ve been meaning to raise it with you, Gabriel. But I szzzee now they were never returned to Heaven in the first place. The traitors took them. They muszzt have. They stole soulzzzs from Hell.’

Gabriel turned back around to glare at Aziraphale, shaking his head, arms fisting by his side in rage, ‘for fuck’s sake, Aziraphale! You’re stealing souls from Hell now? You’ve always been soft and stupid and disobeidient and now you are stealing souls from Hell?!’

Aziraphale smiled nervously. Gabriel’s insults stung. They stung so much more than Aziraphale wanted them too. He drew himself up to full height and said as bravely as he could, ‘I…I suppose I did.’ Aziraphale’s clenched his hands behind his back—an old habit when speaking to Gabriel—as he continued, ‘but Gabriel, they were incorrectly assigned so, technically, I was well within my rights to request an audit.’

Gabriel shook his head in frustration, his fingers pressing into his temple, ‘Technically, technically. It’s always been loopholes and technicalities with you, hasn’t it? Right from the start. I should have seen your traitorous bullshit coming,’ he threw up his hands in frustration and rubbed his face, ‘Right. Fine. Arthur whoever and the garden spirits can watch the proceedings,’ he waved Arthur back into the half-circle of spirits and Arthur obligingly allowed himself to be shooed back for now. Crowley gave Aziraphale’s shoulder a comforting squeeze.

Gabriel strode back to the front of the crowd and glared around menacingly, ‘Now, can we at last get on with it? Or is someone else going to join the party?’

As soon as Gabriel had completed his question another spirit appeared immediately before him in a blaze of white light and glory, a golden halo framing his head.

‘Oh,’ Gabriel breathed, head bowing a little, ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Is that a greeting or an exclamation of surprise?’ Jesus laughed good-naturedly, halo glinting in the sunlight.

Gabriel smiled painfully, lifting his eyes to look at Jesus directly, ‘Ah, that joke is still funny. No matter how many times you make it.’

‘Well, in fairness, Gabriel,’ Jesus smiled widely, ‘I am the only one who can make it. Anyway, Gabriel, I thought I might make an appearance. I’m meant to, aren’t I? At the end of the world? Only I’m pretty sure that’s what you’d said.’

The human crowd gasped. This one—this powerful being, this spirit—they recognised. This appearance they could understand. Some people in the crowd fainted, some prayed, and some burst into tears. Fiona clutched at Glenn’s arm, tears welling in her eyes, filled with reverence and wonder. All were awed, even those who had never followed him. There’s famous, and then there’s famous. And Jesus was about as famous as fame gets.

Gabriel nodded, taking this unexpected appearance in his stride. Maybe he could twist this one to his favour. Maybe this appearance was exactly what Heaven needed. The humans certainly seemed impressed. He stood tall and proud and cried out, ‘Behold, humanity, your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has come to Earth on behalf of the Almighty for your day of reckoning! He has come to judge you all and to judge Eve and Lilith’s holy quest to make the world anew. If they have failed, then your Lord Jesus Christ shall stand with Heaven as we reign down holy righteousness upon the world!’

Jesus turned from Gabriel to face the crowd directly. He smiled warmly and gave everyone a relaxed and friendly wave, ‘Hello everyone, so good to be here in London on this fine day. Oh, I like the signs! Hey, that’s one of mine,’ he said pointing, ‘so good of you to remember.’

The crowd gasped, a few more people fainting, tears flowing freely from many eyes. ‘We’re saved,’ several in the crowd whispered, ‘we’re saved.’

Jesus shifted uncomfortably at the crowd’s reaction. Why did everyone always have to be like this? But he put his own feelings carefully aside. That wasn’t what he was here for. He was here to support Evie and Lil. His kind eyes sought them out and he grinned again, ‘Hello, Evie, hello Lil, I hope your day is turning out alright so far.’

‘Bit challenging to be honest,’ Evie replied with a laugh.

‘Well, it would be,’ Jesus smiled. He turned back to Gabriel, ‘Gabriel,’ he said, his voice infused with gentleness but at a volume that ensured everyone could hear, ‘you misunderstand me. I shall be standing with them,’ he gestured behind himself to Evie, Lil and the crowd, ‘I’m here to support my friends.’

Gabriel’s eyes widened in horror, mouth falling open in shock. His eyes darted between Jesus and the twins. How had they even met? Who had allowed that? He’d been so careful about who and what Evie and Lil were exposed to. His eyes narrowed as he looked back to Jesus, ‘you would set yourself against Heaven?’

‘I stand with humanity,’ Jesus corrected him kindly, ‘As I believe the Almighty has always intended me to. But Gabriel, I want to be clear on this: I mean you no harm. I forgive you and I forgive the Metatron. I know all of what you have done, and I forgive all of it, right back to when the Metatron ordered me to die. Three years is such a short ministry. But I like to think I made the most of it, even the ending.’

Aziraphale drew in a sharp gasp, as the meaning of Jesus’ words snapped into place. Of course. _Of course_. If the actions of Heaven had been without the true guidance of the Almighty for all this time then Jesus had been sent to his death not by God but by the Metatron, speaking as God. Oh, Heaven must have disapproved of his message! They must have ordered him matryed in order to silence him. And, as a final miracle, Jesus had used his own death to ensure that his message would spread far and wide. The greatest story ever told. Clever. So clever. Of course, the message had become garbled many times, it had been misunderstood and misused, but that was inevitable. It had, nevertheless, spread further than any story in human history. And there were, even today, followers who found the true meaning within it. Aziraphale shook his head in disgust, ‘You’re monsters, Gabriel! You and the Metatron both! Absolute fucking pricks!’

Jesus turned away from Gabriel in surprise and he glanced over the crowd, looking for the source of the familiar voice, ‘Aziraphale?’ he cried out, voice dancing with delight, ‘Is that you?’

Aziraphale smiled at Jesus as he held his arm up over the crowd and waved, his face flushed with sudden pleasure, ‘Hello, over here.’

‘Aziraphale!’ Jesus grinned warmly as he strode up to greet Aziraphale arms outstretched, crowd parting naturally around him. Jesus hadn’t yet embraced Aziraphale when he recognised who was standing by his side. Once gain his eyes widened in shock, ‘Crowley?’

Crowley nodded and smiled, giving Jesus a little wink, ‘Hi.’

Jesus smiled again, shaking his head in delight. He warmly embraced them both, Aziraphale first and then Crowley.

‘I never did get to see the world,’ Jesus whispered softly to Crowley as they embraced, ‘but as a spirit I get out and about where I can. That said, I did manage a little American tour recently…’

‘I know,’ Crowley whispered patting his back comfortingly, ‘I know.’

‘But wait,’ Jesus said, as he stepped back from Crowley’s embrace, fully taking in Aziraphale and Crowley’s relative proximity, ‘Aziraphale, are you two?’ He pointed between them, raising his eyebrows.

Aziraphale looked down coyly, a pink blush spreading across his cheeks, ‘we are a couple, yes.’

‘Oh,’ Jesus said with a little smile, thinking this through based on all he’d known of the two of them. He’d never seen them together in life. And his acquaintance with Crowley had been brief. But though it had been short it had been intense and meaningful. Jesus liked to think he’d gotten the measure of him well enough. Finally, he nodded, ‘Yes, I can see that. I can see it.’ Jesus smiled, his whole face lighting up. He was delighted to discover that Aziraphale had someone like Crowley by his side.

‘A couple?!’ Gabriel growled, his voice bristling with all the frustration and disappointment of the day, ‘you are in a romantic relationship with… with a demon?!’ Gabriel’s eyes roved over Crowley as his mouth curled in disgust, ‘Are you engaging in acts of fornication with him? You eat and drink like a human, are you fornicating like a human?’

Aziraphale stood tall even as his face flushed, ‘Yes, I am as a matter of fact. And it is quite delightful.’

‘Fornicating with the Serpent?!’ Gabriel said with a grimace, ‘with the Serpent, Aziraphale?! How much lower can an angel sink?’ 

Crowley snorted in amusement and added loudly, ‘Aziraphale’s quite good at it, actually, the whole fornication thing.’

‘Shut up, dear,’ Aziraphale whispered under his breath, his face still a delicate shade of pink.

Crowley obediently closed his mouth, foregoing the temptation to say more. 

Jesus chuckled heartily by their side.

Beelzebub snorted and the sound snapped Gabriel back. He looked back to Beelzebub, making eye contact. Beelzebub raised a single eyebrow, ‘I szzugesst you get on with it. Who can interrupt uszzz now? Everybody iszzz here.’

‘Right,’ Gabriel said, straightening up to a dignified posture. ‘Are we all assembled?’ he asked, looking around at the crowd as if he himself had invited every single one of them, ‘I believe we are all present.’

Gabriel’s lavender eyes found Evie and Lil and he cleared his throat importantly. His voice boomed, ‘Eve and Lil, you were given the task of fixing the world. The Almighty created the world in seven days, and you were given seven days to fix it. Have you accomplished your goal?’

Lil squeezed her sister’s hand. Mia, standing behind her, reached forward and gave Evie’s shoulder a comforting touch. Evie stood straight and tall, sister at her side, lover and friend at her back and many more here besides. She replied decisively, ‘Archangel Gabriel, Lord Beelezebub, you tasked us not just with fixing the world but determining how it was to be fixed. Not just determining how it was to be fixed but determining what exactly had gone wrong in the first place.’

Gabriel nodded in acknowledgement, and Beelezebub grinned a little behind him. Beelezebub was intrigued.

Evie continued, encouraged by Gabriel’s nod and Beelezebub’s smile, ‘The world does not require our intervention. The solution is already here,’ she gestured behind herself, ‘it is in them.’

Gabriel frowned, his eyes darting from Evie and Lil to the crowd. The crowd shifted nervously under his gaze. They all looked perfectly ordinary to Gabriel. Just another mass of filthy, sinful humanity. Adam grinned. Gabriel grimaced. Whatever Evie was talking about, Gabriel didn’t see it. He looked back to Evie and Lil, ‘The solution is humanity?’ he said sceptically.

Evie nodded decisively, ‘Yes. Humanity left the garden. But they didn’t just leave it, _they took Eden with them_. Not the ignorance, but all that was good about Eden—peace, love, equanimity, transcendence —they carry all of that inside themselves,’ Evie gestured towards her own heart, ‘Don’t you see, Gabriel? _Humanity_ can rebuild Eden anew, but a new Eden, an Eden that is built _freely_ , an Eden that is built _knowingly_ , an Eden they can be conscious of. The solution is within humanity. It has been all along.’

From the back of the crowd Aziraphale gasped his mouth opening into a wide O. Crowley raised his eyebrows and nodded in appreciation. Interesting, he thought to himself, very interesting. Jesus grinned widely, overcome with a warm pride. He was always delighted when someone truly understood. It just didn’t happen often enough.

Gabriel frowned, giving Evie’s theory his full consideration. Gabriel had invested a fair degree of effort into Evie and Lil at this point. It wouldn’t do to simply dismiss anything they said out of hand. But, after a moment of consideration, he shook his head definitely, ‘No, no. That’s absolutely ridiculous. No. We give you seven days to fix the world and you give us a line about it being fixed anyway when it is so clearly broken? About humanity somehow doing it?’ Gabriel laughed loudly pointing at the crowd, ‘I mean, have you met them?’

‘It is absurd,’ Beelezebub agreed with her nose turned up in distaste, ‘Frankly, I thought we taught you girls better. What a waste of our time you’ve been,’ she shrugged, ‘but I can’t be disappointed, Gabriel. It that just means we get to proceed to plan B.’

Gabriel turned to Beelezebub, his eyes meeting her own and he grinned. Gabriel’s perfect and handsome face transformed menacingly. The crowd shook and gasped as they glimpsed the wrath of Heaven.

‘No!’ Lil cried out, shaking in fear, ‘no, please! Archangel Gabriel, Lord Beelezebub, punish us for failing if you must but please, I beg you, leave the Earth intact.’

Gabriel sneered, ‘why should we?’

‘Because, don’t you see?’ Evie shouted, ‘none of us know for sure what the Almighty intended. It is possible that this is the world that the Almighty intended all along. And I…I believe it is. I believe that everything is happening according to her plan. How could it not? And if we are going to make the world better then the solution starts here,’ she gestured to her own heart with an open palm, ‘in all of us.’

Gabriel and Beelzebub frowned, both trying to work this out. Beelezebub looked down at her chest, where her own heart would be and shook her head in annoyance.

‘Even if the Almighty intended something else,’ Lil added, sensing that what had been said already had not been convincing, ‘Even if the Almighty wants the Earth destroyed, even then, have mercy, anyway. For pity’s sake, Archangel Gabriel and Lord Beelezebub, _have mercy_.’

Gabriel snorted and clicked his fingers. The sky transformed into a white mass of angels, the glory of it blocking out the blue, blocking out the clouds. A heavenly army, row upon splendid row. There were far too many, of course, to fit into the visiable line of the sky, but this army was not limited by physics and so they fit anyway. The human crowd gasped. They could see every solider, every warrior in detail, and, at the same time, the army stretched on forever. The other Archangels stood at the front, directly behind Gabriel. Aziraphale could see Michael’s self-satisfied smirk from where he stood. He could see Uriel and Sandalphon, too. Sandalphon, Aziraphale mused to himself, looked even stupider after all these years. Strange how you could forget how very thick some people were.

Beelezebub clicked her fingers. The ground shock and the very forces of darkness rose from the ground, like a forest instantly growing, instantly springing up to cover the Earth. They too should not have fit. They too, fit anyway. Row upon row of demons, terrifying and foul and ready to fight side by side with their old enemies against humanity. Crowley recognised Hastur right up front and centre. Of course. And Dagon. Crowley hissed softly. The crowd trembled in terror and awe.

An army of angels above, an army of demons below. That is what humanity faced. The human crowd shifted and stirred nervously, and the spirits behind, human still although dead, floated about with an air of nervous anticipation. Eventually, someone—human or spirit, who knows? — cried out what they were all thinking, ‘What do we do?’

‘Do we fight?’ another voice shakily answered, as humans and ghosts, the living and the dead of the Earth, thought as one on behalf of the entire world.

‘Against angels and demons?’ another voice answered, ‘How could we possibly win?’

Lil bit her lip as the answer came to her in a rush. She turned to address the crowd, to address humanity. Ethan quickly shifted out of her way, knowing from the little crease on her forehead that something brilliant was coming. Lil spoke to the crowd and the ghosts and, through them, to the world they represented, ‘you can’t. If you fight, you can’t win. If you play by their rules, you can’t win. They are infinitely more powerful than us. We can’t win. But we know something they don’t and that something is this: we don’t have to fight and _neither do they_.’

Beelezebub snorted contemptuously, ‘of course you muszzzt fight. It’s a _war_ , Lililth. When we hack you down where you stand, you’ll fight. You’ll sell us your body and your children, you’ll eat shit and piss yourself, you’ll kill, and you’ll run, and you’ll cry for your mothers and you’ll _fight_. I’ve seen it a thousand times. If there’s one thing I know it is the darkness of humanity.’

‘No. No, you don’t. You don’t understand humanity at all, not even their dark side,’ Lil answered forcefully, turning back to face Gabriel and Beelezebub, ‘And it isn’t Lilith. It is Lil. We go by Evie and Lil.’

Ethan beamed with pride. That’s my girl, he thought to himself, that’s my girl. Gabriel sneered contemptuously.

‘We don’t have to fight,’ Lil spoke loud and clear, ‘Humanity doesn’t have to fight. And neither do you. None of us truly knows what the Almighty intends, not human nor angel nor demon. That’s the truth. Perhaps you believe that your choices are guided by the Almighty as Evie does or perhaps like me, you are sceptical of that. Regardless, all we have are our choices and we all must choose. You were told choices were only for the humans. But that is a lie. You choose too. You choose everyday. You choose even as you deny it. You know you do. And you can choose to walk away from this war. You can choose not to fight. Maybe that’s what the Almighty wants from you, and maybe it isn’t. But the choice is yours and you must make it.’

‘Who fucking cares? Not affecting me, Sunshine,’ Gabriel said with a melodramatic yawn.

Beelezebub snorted contemptuously next to him, ‘Not that impressive a speech at all, Lilith. Did you really think that might sway us?

‘With all due respect, Gabriel and Beelezebub, I’m not talking to _you_. I’m talking to _them_ ,’ Lil said, pointing to the rows upon rows of angels and demons waiting behind them, poised and ready for war. She looked to the angelic and demonic armies and projected her voice out into the universe at miraculous volume. The universe shivered and stilled and listened, ‘Don’t you see? Don’t you see, all of you? I don’t know what God wants from us. Is this all part of some carefully constructed plan, a beautiful and majestic ineffable thing? Is it all for our own good, the perfect plan of a loving God? Is it a test? Are we lab rats in the most glorious experiment of all? Or are we pawns in a divine game, thrown around the board for someone else’s cold amusement? Who knows? But I was raised amongst you. I was raised in Heaven and Hell. You are my brothers and sisters. You are my siblings. And I know this. I know it through and through…’ Lil paused and licked her lips. Reality waited.

Crowley reached out and grabbed Aziraphale’s hand, squeezing it tightly. ‘Sssay it,’ he whispered, ‘Sssay it….’

‘ _You’re free!’_ Lil shouted. And with a head shake she added, ‘ _You always were._ ’

Her words tore through the ranks of the angels and demons, a wave of liberty rolling through their hearts and minds.

‘Oh my,’ Aziraphale gasped, looking up to the sky and the rows of angels, and then to the ground to the multitudes of demons. Some of them held position, hands on weapons, faces fixed in determined glares. But some wore expressions of confusion, faces twisted in puzzlement. Some had lowered their weapons slightly. Some were shaking their heads as if trying desperately to clear them. 

The universe tensed, waiting for someone to come to a decision, waiting for someone to make a choice. The angels and demons were free. But now they had to seize their freedom. Reality waited patiently for a choice to be made. 

Finally, an angel—at least a hundred rows back—stepped out of line. She looked back to her comrades and lowered her sword fully. Although she was far back from Evie, Lil and the crowd, physics did not apply itself to the angelic army. Everyone could see and hear the angel clearly as if she stood right next to them. She cleared her throat and swallowed hard. Then she spoke, ‘Actually, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with killing humans. I…I know I’m just an ordinary angel, but I really don’t think that’s what the Almighty created us for.’

Crowley squinted through his sunglasses. He turned to Aziraphale, ‘the platoon she’s from. Isn’t that yours?’

Aziraphale cleared his throat, eyes widening meaningfully, ‘I do believe it is.’

Jesus gave Aziraphale a wide smile. Of course, it was. Of course, it was.

Gabriel whipped around quickly to face the dissenter and growled, ‘What would you know of the Almighty and her wishes? I’m the Archangel Gabriel. The orders we follow today come directly from the Metatron. Get back into line.’

The angel chewed at her bottom lip and Crowley was reminded of the worried expression Aziraphale would get right before he would do something terribly daring. Crowley’s heart thumped in his chest. He knew what was coming.

The angel frowned and shook her head tightly.

‘Get back into line!’ Gabriel roared.

‘No,’ the angel said with determination, ‘I don’t want to kill humans,’ she paused a moment and added with less certainty, ‘and you can’t make me.’

‘Actually,’ another angel piped up as he broke rank and lowered his weapon, ‘I don’t want to kill humans either.’

‘I just don’t want to fight,’ another angel jumped in as she broke rank, ‘I don’t want to fight anyone. What good does war ever do?’

A wave dissent spread throughout the ranks of the angelic army as angel after angel stepped out of line. The wave quickly spread to the demonic army below.

‘I don’t want to fight either,’ a demon said, stepping aside, ‘this isn’t what I joined the revolution for.’

‘Yeah, I just wanted to talk about working conditions,’ another demon said, breaking rank, ‘Penalty rates, health and safety regulations, holidays… That kind of thing. I didn’t even want to fight in the first war, I’m sure as hell not going to fight in this one.’

‘I want to be an artist!’ an angel shouted, ‘I want to draw and paint and create things of beauty!’

‘I want to be a scientist!’ a demon called out.

‘I want to travel the world!’ another angel yelled.

‘I think we should form a democratic system of government…’ a demon cried out to a chorus of cheers from those around her.

Crowley grabbed Aziraphale beside him, his fingers digging roughly into his shoulder, ‘Angel! They’re doing it. They’re thinking for themselves!’

Aziraphale smiled, his eyes lighting up with wonder. Why had the possibility of this never occurred to him? Why, even after this own liberation had Aziraphale never imagined that his fellow angels could be liberated too? He should have realised this was possible, Aziraphale thought to himself. He should have helped them. Tears welled his eyes. Aziraphale was ashamed of himself for never thinking to help his fellow angels, but at the same time deeply relieved to discover that help had come anyway. ‘It’s marvellous!’ he choked out, ‘oh Crowley, it’s marvellous.’

Jesus smiled next to them both, tears falling freely down his face, ‘It is wondrous. He who has ears, let him listen. They’re listening. They’re listening.’

The wave of dissent continued, with angel after angel, demon after demon, stepping out of line, lowering their weapons.

‘I want to write crime shows for television!’ a demon called out.

‘I want to be a folk singer!’ another demon screamed.

‘I just really love scrapbooking!’ an angel yelled.

Crowley grimaced and shook his head, ‘there’s no accounting for taste. Well, I suppose they’re getting the basic principle.’

‘I want to share love with a demon!’ an angel yelled, ‘I just… I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s so…so wily and cunning and sexy….’ The angel gulped as several angels around her gasped in horror.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows in surprise and nodded sympathetically.

‘I love you too!’ A demon cried out as he broke rank and threw his weapon on the ground, ‘I’m in love with an angel…’ he choked out as the demons around him smirked.

Crowley snorted, ‘not the only ones, then,’ he said catching Aziraphale’s gaze and smiling fondly. Aziraphale smiled coyly back.

‘I’m in love with my allocated human!’ a guardian angel cried out, throwing a hand over her mouth in horror immediately afterwards.

The angels around her gasped, eyes wide with shock.

Crowley snorted again, ‘which just goes to show, there’s always someone kinkier and they’re prolly an angel.’

Aziraphale tutted and shook his head fiddling with his vest uncomfortably.

Crowley chuckled.

‘Look!’ Aziraphale cried out, choosing to ignore Crowley’s dig to focus on the more important matters at hand, ‘look at the numbers!’

‘So many,’ Jesus replied with a head shake and a grin, ‘so many are refusing to fight.’

Well over three quarters of the angels and demons had broken rank and lowered their weapons. Some of the angels and demons that were left continued to stand determined to fight, their faces twisted into vicious expressions. But some of those who remained simply looked lost and confused, like they were caught in indecision, like they simply didn’t know what to do.

‘Hold your line, angels!’ Gabriel yelled above the din of angels and demons shouting out their reasons for breaking rank.

Beelezebub’s eyes narrowed and she growled furiously, ‘Demons! What are you thinking? Hold position, forces of darkness!’

‘What I’m thinking,’ a demon of no particular rank said as he wandered closer, wandering all the way up to Beelezebub, in fact, ‘What I’m thinking is I didn’t join the revolution to be bossed about by someone else. I’m thinking we take this to a democratic vote.’

‘Yes, I agree!’ several angels chimed in, ‘here, here!’

‘This isn’t a fucking democracy!’ Gabriel yelled, pointing to the sky, ‘we do as the Almighty commands!’

The other Archangels quickly and silently moved into position next to Gabriel, facing down their own army. Michael stared coldly at the traitors. Sandalphon bared his teeth threateningly.

‘But no one has heard from her, Gabriel,’ an angel of no particular rank said as she stepped forward, ‘no one has heard from her in such a very long time. So, no one knows for certain what she wants. Who are you and the Metatron to decide for us?’

‘I’m the Archangel fucking Gabriel, that’s who!’ Gabriel snarled.

The angel stood her ground, staring boldly at Gabriel as the Archangels around him stared back with a vicious coldness, with a glare of ice and hate.

‘Alright,’ the demon of no particular rank said, turning around to address the angelic and demonic armies, ‘who wants this war?’

‘Stop it!’ Dagon hissed appearing at Beelezebub’s side, ‘you do not have authority to ask that!’

‘I can ask whatever I like,’ the demon of no particular rank replied indignantly ‘wasn’t that what the revolution was all about?’

‘No!’ Dagon shouted, shaking her head, and gesturing wildly, ‘no! That wasn’t what the revolution was about!’

‘Oh yeah?’ the demon replied defiantly, ‘so what did I fight in it for then?’ He turned back to face the angelic and demonic armies, ‘who wants the war? Raise your hands.’

Some of the angels and demons, the ones who had stayed in place, raised their hands. The demon of no particular rank surveyed the raised hands carefully and miraculously counted them all. He nodded.

‘And who wants to walk away from the war, and build some kind of lives for ourselves?’ he asked.

A much larger proportion of angels and demons—everyone who had stepped aside and some who up until now had merely stood still looking confused— raised their hands. Once again, the demon surveyed the raised hands carefully.

The demon who had called for a vote grinned widely, ‘well, it looks like there’s no war.’

A jubilant cheer rose from the human crowd and crashed over them all. The angels and demons joined in, the joy spreading in waves throughout Creation.

Dagon turned to Beelezebub, ‘Do something! You have to do something!’ But Beelezebub was clever. She knew when the tide was turning. And she hadn’t been at the front of one glorious revolution just to be gutted in the next one. She shrugged, ‘what’s to be done? You saw them. They voted.’ 

‘C’mon then everyone!’ the demon who had called for a vote called out with his fist in the air, ‘let’s get out of here!’

One by one the angels and demons began to disappear, slowly at first and then by the multitude.

‘Stop!’ Michael cried out to the angels, ‘stop that! We’ll find you! We’ll find every last one of you and we’ll make you pay for your treachery today!’

Gabriel stamped his foot, his face twisting in rage, ‘your orders come directly from God! The Metatron speaks for God!’

Another angel—again of no particular rank—said, ‘the Metatron is the voice of God in the same way the presidential spokesman is the voice of the president. Until the Lord herself commands me to attack humanity, I will not do it. Frankly, we’ve been following you and the Metatron for far too long.’

Gabriel growled, his voice dripping with wrath, ‘how dare you!’

But the angel simply slipped away. Angels and demons left, and they kept leaving.

Beelezebub shook her head and turned to Gabriel, ‘Gabriel, I think we need to…’

Gabriel glared at her, unwilling to consider for a moment that they had lost this.

Beelezebub sighed, ‘Gabriel, we need to deal with this. There iszzn’t going to be a war today.’

Gabriel’s eyes fluttered shut in frustration and he turned away from the angelic army to stalk towards Evie and Lil, ‘What is it with you kids! We raised you two. You were supposed to be different. You were supposed to understand!’

Evie sighed sympathetically. Gabriel was an arsehole. There was no doubt about that. And Evie has spent most of her life terrified for him. She was terrified of him still. But right here, right now, she saw a different side to him. She saw the frightened child underneath the bully. It didn’t erase his brutish behaviour; it didn’t make it right or neutralise Evie’s lifelong fear. But, right now, Evie could find compassion for him, ‘Gabriel, have you ever considered that you might be wrong?’

‘No, I haven’t!’ Gabriel raged, raising his hand as if to strike her down. The entire crowd behind them rose up as one to protect Evie but it wasn’t necessary. Michael, Sandalphon and Uriel came instantly to Gabriel’s side. Sandalphon caught his wrist, stopping the blow and Michael and Uriel took an arm each, helping to guide him away. Once they’d travelled a little back from the crowd, they disappeared, returning to Heaven and taking Gabriel with them.

Beelezebub nodded, relieved, and smoothly took over command. If you can’t command people to do what you want, then command them to do what they are doing anyway. It was an old trick. But a reliable one for times such as these. Beelezebub would survive. She wasn’t sure how. But dammit, she would survive. She drew herself up to full height, ‘Alright, angels and demons, listen up. There’ll be no war today. Back to Heaven and Hell with the lot of you. C’mon, off you go now. You are dismissed.’

The angels and demons who had remained, who’d been waiting for the signal to fight, lowered their weapons at this command.

Beelezebub repeated it, ‘I said you are dismissed. That’s an order. Stand down the lot of you.’

The remaining angels and demons nodded and, one by one, they disappeared, back to Heaven and back to Hell.

Beelezebub watched them go, her keen eyes surveying the armies with authority.

Eventually, apart from Aziraphale and Crowley, Beelezebub was the only angel or demon still standing, the only one still on Earth. Then and only then did she turn to look at Evie and Lil. She stood, dignified and calm and just looked at them both.

Lil flinched, expecting a tirade, expecting to be torn to shreds by one of the beings who was the closest thing to a parent that Lil and Evie had ever known. But Beelezebub just shook her head, ‘I waszzz right about deszzzire, waszzzn’t I? I never realizzzed it would be the deszzzires of my own demons that would undermine uszzz. That waszzz my failing. I should have seen that coming,’ she snorted. Then she laughed and sighed. ‘Let the record show,’ she said softly, ‘I was right about deszzzire.’

‘Beelezebub,’ Lil began but Beelezebub cut her off.

‘You _won_ , girlszzz. Hand well played,’ she shook her head, ‘well played, indeed. I congratulate you,’ and with that she clicked her fingers and disappeared.

The tension in the crowd slipped away with her. A cheer rose from the crowd, a great roar of joy. Humans hugged and cried, and spirits danced gleefully behind them.

Adam hugged each of the Them in turn. Poppy grinned up at Pepper, ‘see, mum! We’re fine!’ Pepper laughed and rubbed her head, messing up her hair. Then she reached for her wife Phoebe, giving her a kiss. Meanwhile, Wensleydale scooped up his boys and tossed them around in joy and Brain hugged a weeping Chloe.

Fiona turned to Glenn and hugged him tightly, tears in her eyes.

‘What the fuck just happened, Fi?’ Glenn whispered into her shoulder.

‘I don’t know,’ Fiona chuckled, ‘I don’t know.’

Jesus laughed and praised God and high fived Aziraphale and Crowley. Then he ran through the crowd, hugging as many people as he could. Some of them fainted in religious ecstasy. Jesus found that, for now, he didn’t mind.

Crowley pulled Aziraphale in towards him and held him close. Tears welled behind his sunglasses. ‘I love you,’ he choked out.

‘I love you too, my dear,’ Aziraphale replied wetly, ‘things will never be the same again, will they?’

‘Nah,’ Crowley grinned, ‘they’re be better. Or more interesting at least.’

Aziraphale chuckled.

Ethan’s arms wrapped tightly around Lil. ‘I’m so damn proud of you,’ he whispered tenderly into her raven-black hair.

Molly woofed loudly as she bounced around the couple, a little dance that culminated in her jumping up on them both.

Lil laughed, ‘Mol!’ She reached down with one hand and scratched Molly’s head, placating her without leaving Ethan’s embrace.

Mia’s arms encircled Evie. She squeezed hard. ‘I love you,’ she whispered. ‘I love you too,’ Evie replied hoarsely.

Then, somewhere in the mess of joy and relief, in the sweet celebration, as elation that washed over them all, Evie’s dark eyes found those of her sister. Evie smiled. Lil smiled right back.

‘We did it,’ Evie said hoarsely, beginning to shake in Mia’s arms.

‘We did it,’ Lil mouthed in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed the big showdown!
> 
> This is just a little note to say that I've created a series From Good to Great and made Great Omens a part of that series. I have three new fics planned for the series: a continuation of the bus ride/night at Crowley's flat, a fic dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and another sequel based on what Neil has said about the sequel that he and Terry planned (it would occur in between Good Omens and Great Omens). And who knows? I may well write more. So if you are enjoying Great Omens, please subscribe to/bookmark the series. 
> 
> Thanks everyone!


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> They have survived The Big One. Lil pronounced the angels and demons free and the majority of angels and demons refused to fight. The war is off. Now what?

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**The day after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A London flat**

‘What did you say this was again?’ Lil said curiously as she took another forkful.

Ethan smiled fondly, ‘Curry. That one is beef vindaloo in fact.’

Lil nodded and chewed her mouthful of curry carefully, relishing the flavours. ‘Well it’s good,’ Lil pronounced after she’d swallowed. ‘Really good,’ Lil added as she shovelled another mouthful in.

Evie nodded in furious agreement as she dipped her poppadum into the butter chicken gravy on her plate, ‘so good.’

Ethan’s eyes met Mia’s and they grinned, both appreciating just how lucky they were. Not only were they lucky that the Earth had survived, lucky to still be alive, but Ethan and Mia had somehow—and they knew not how—managed to win the hearts of two of the most extraordinary beings to have ever lived. Oh, and those extraordinary beings whose hearts they had won? They were apparently half-angel or something as well. 

‘I can’t believe we did it,’ Evie said thickly, mouth full of food, ‘can’t believe we stopped the whole…’ she swallowed, and her hands fluttered about, ‘destroy the world thing.’

‘What do you think they’ll do now?’ Mia asked, tearing off a piece of naan, ‘the angels and demons I mean?’

Lil thought about this for a bit, ‘who knows? It’ll be different, that’s for sure. More like humans I guess,’ she shrugged.

Evie nodded, forehead furrowed in thought, ‘Yeah, I mean they will be making their own choices now. So that’ll bring, well, all this,’ she gestured around herself vaguely, ‘the good and the bad.’

‘Will they just accept that, though?’ Ethan asked with a frown, ‘Gabriel and Beelezebub, I mean? Gabriel looked pretty pissed off when they carried him away. And Beelezebub, well, it didn’t seem like she was going to just give up. It seemed like she was hatching a plan.’

Evie and Lil nodded simultaneously, giving this some thought before replying, little creases lining their foreheads. For all children, the parent is simultaneously someone who is known through and through, and yet, also someone who is quite unfathomable. So much of the parent’s history, after all, by definition, occurs before a child is born. And children always see their parent through the haze of their own needs, met and unmet. For Evie and Lil, Gabrel and Beelezebub were the closest things to parents that they had. They had been the ones to set the boundaries of their childhood, and to guide, at every step, how they were raised, even if they didn’t perform all of it directly.

Eventually Evie spoke, ‘I can’t imagine Gabriel just giving up,’ she paused a moment, ‘Or the Metatron,’ she said thoughtfully.

Lil shook her head, ‘yeah, no they’ll hang onto as much power as they can. I can’t imagine them changing their tune. Beelezebub, I don’t know about. I could see her trying to be at the front of whatever happens next. This isn’t her first revolution. And look what she did with the first.’

Evie nodded, chewing at her bottom lip, ‘Yeah, I agree.’

‘Then there’s Satan, of course. Who knows? Maybe he’ll stick with Beelezebub and whatever she does or maybe he’ll team up with the Metatron and Gabriel. Isn’t his first revolution, either,’ Lil continued with a shrug.

Evie nodded again, ‘Harder to say what Satan will do. We haven’t exactly met him.’

‘So, the angels and the demons will have to deal with ruthless dictators clinging to whatever power they can as well as charismatic and clever opportunists trying to distort any positive changes to their personal benefit,’ Mia said, summing it up. She sighed, ‘that’s awful. How will they handle that?’

Lil snorted, ‘like humans do, I guess. I mean what’s new? You’re always dealing with this stuff.’

Mia considered this and nodded, ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she tore off another piece of naan, ‘and what about God? Is she going to show up at some point do you think?’

Evie smiled wildly and tapped on Mia’s chest right over her heart, ‘Mia, my love, she never left.’

Mia beamed, her whole face lighting up. The Kingdom of God is in you. She reached up and caught Evie’s hand in her own and squeezed it tightly. Evie squeezed it right back.

Ethan raised his eyebrows and winked at Lil. Lil snorted and then cleared her throat. She might not share Evie’s confidence in God, but she didn’t want to be rude. Whatever helped Evie was alright by Lil, and if it helped Mia too, well, all the better.

‘The question is,’ Lil said, as she leaned forward to scoop more butter chicken onto her plate, ‘the real question is, what are we going to do now? I never really expected to have an actual, you know, life.’

Evie laughed loudly, a beautiful melodic sound.

‘Whatever you want,’ Ethan said with a grin, reaching out and taking Lil’s hand, ‘now you do whatever you want.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**The Garden of the Faithless Good**

It was the garden. And, at the same time, it was _not_ the garden. With the remarkably high number of scientists and philosophers in their number— including some quite famous names thank-you very much—that was the kind of startling conclusion that they jointly came to in no time at all. But, what did it mean? That was a little more complex, a little more up for debate. Again, in no small way, due to the remarkably high number of scientists and philosophers.

Oh, the apple tree was there. The Oak and the Elm. The rose garden was there. The lavender was there and all the other flowers. The lawn was there, verdantly green and soft underfoot. Even the bench that Crowley and Aziraphale were so fond of sitting on was there. But two features were notably absent. The first was the cottage and the second was the fence. And their mere absence wasn’t the strangest bit. The garden now seemed to go on forever. If you—as Arthur Sinclair and others soon tried—floated towards where the fence used to be, instead of a fence you’d find more lawn, more garden, another apple tree. Exactly the same thing happened if Arthur floated towards where the cottage should have been. The garden stretched on and on, repeating the same landscape and themes, over and over, seemingly for eternity.

They appeared to be outside the physical world. This garden, the scientists quickly put forward, was not on Earth. Once that suggestion was on the table, they immediately attempted travelling back to Earth—using loved ones as an anchor as they had been doing—and found, much to everyone’s relief, that they could still do so.

As the philosophers and scientists continued to debate the meaning of this change, it was Arthur himself who tested the metaphysical connection to Aziraphale and Crowley. To his great relief, the metaphysical connection remained. He found himself quickly transported within their presence, immediately recognising his new location as the bookshop that Aziraphale had told him of so fondly. When Arthur had volunteered to test the connection to Aziraphale and Crowly, he had done so intending to bring the changes in their situation to Aziraphale and Crowley’s attention immmedately. After all, he reasoned, they would no doubt have useful insights. But, when Arthur appeared in the bookshop, he found he didn’t have the heart to disturb them. It was clear that they were quite occupied. Arthur remembered the promise he had made, the promise that the spirits wouldn’t prove to be a burden. Arthur shook his ghostly head. He’d tell them in due course. Crowley, no doubt, deserved to have his own garden back. And so, after confirming that the link still existed, that Arthur could easily find Aziraphale and Crowley at any moment, Arthur allowed himself to be tugged back to where he now belonged: the third final destination of human souls, new Garden of the Faithless Good.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Day after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A.Z. Fell and Co. Purveyor of Books to the Gentry, Soho, London**

Aziraphale slipped the final bite of cheesecake into his mouth with a little sigh of contentment, as Crowley watched with intensity, chin in hand. Aziraphale gave the little silver fork a lick and then dropped it. It clinked as it hit the bone china plate. Aziraphale picked up a serviette and patted his mouth, ‘Absolutely scrumptious all round. A good meal was just what I needed.’

Crowley lifted a single eyebrow, ‘Course I had already taken you to your favourite sushi restaurant last night and we had lunch at the Ritz.’

‘You have some complaints to make, dear?’ Aziraphale replied, slightly ruffled.

Crowley grinned and said softly, ‘Oh, I’m not complaining.’

Aziraphale smiled coyly, his cheeks dusted pink, and his eyes dancing away from Crowley’s, ‘I should think that playing our part, however small, in saving the world a _second time_ , warrants several good meals.’

‘I quite agree,’ Crowley drawled, gesturing widely, ‘and glorious amounts of wine.’

‘Oh, I’ve got just the thing. Hold on, dear,’ Aziraphale muttered as he slipped out of the room.

Aziraphale soon returned carrying a bottle of red and two wine glasses. Crowley smiled up at him, amber eyes glinting in the soft light as Azraiphale poured the wine. He handed Crowley his glass and sat on the couch next to him.

Aziraphale took a sip of his wine, his gaze soft and fuzzy as he looked out towards his bookshelves. ‘I, I was thinking,’ he began, somewhat nervously, ‘while you were catching up on sleep…’

‘Hm?’ Crowley said, taking a sip of wine, and looking at Aziraphale with a little frown.

Aziraphale put his glass on the coffee table and his hands began to knot in his lap and he kept staring at the bookshelves, not meeting Crowley’s eyes, ‘Do, do you…do you think the Almighty planned it like this all along?’

Crowley snorted and shook his head, ‘I wouldn’t put anything past her.’

Aziraphale frowned, as if the answer didn’t quite satisfy. He turned to Crowley, his eyes finding Crowley’s amber ones, ‘But if you had to guess, dear, would you guess that this is all part of it, part of some great ineffable plan: our own side, the Garden of the Faithless Good, angels and demons finding that they have freedom too, saving the world again. Was it all part of some grand plan? Has she been quiet for so long for a reason? Is it all, somehow, for our own good?’

Crowley stared at Aziraphale for several beats, his golden eyes wide and soft. He shifted on the couch and licked his lips. Finally, he spoke, his voice soft and gentle, ‘Does she love us?’

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip, fighting back tears. He made a little desperate noise and nodded a quick little nod.

Crowley sighed. He put his wine glass on the coffee table. Crowley reached out and took Azriraphale’s hands in his own. His gaze found Aziraphale’s and he squeezed Aziraphale’s hands, ‘Aziraphale, angel, I don’t exactly have a good track record with her, do I? ‘m probably not the right person for you to ask.’

‘Nevertheless…’ Aziraphale began in a pleading tone but Crowley interrupted him.

‘S alright. I’ll still give you my answer, for what it’s worth,’ Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hands again, ‘remember she said she was going to test them, yeah?’

Aziraphale nodded slowly.

‘Yeah, well, that’s what I reckon is happening. She’s testing them. Only she was testing us too, all along. Didn’t tell us that bit. And if she was testing them, and testing us, and it all came to this: a war between us,’ Crowley shook his head and smiled as if the conclusion was obvious, ‘well then…’

Aziraphale frowned, eyes darting side to side as he tried to fathom Crowley’s great leaps of imagination, ‘Well what, Crowley?’

Crowley laughed. ‘Bit strange, isn’t it? Make beings who are immortal, powerful who can literally warp reality but clip their wings, entrap them, deny them free will, tell them they don’t get choices. Then, make another race, mortal, short-lived, vulnerable, so very vulnerable and utterly powerless. But kick them out of the garden, give them choice.’

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip. Yes, that was strange.

‘Who would win?’ Crowley continued, ‘Or rather, what would win. Power or freedom?’

‘What?’ Aziraphale gasped, his mouth falling open in shock.

Crowley shrugged, ‘I mean I don’t know. I really don’t. Jus’ sayin’ maybe that’s the test: with infinite freedom, could little scrawny powerless humans take on angels and demons and win?’ He shrugged again, ‘she’s got both infinite power and freedom herself so I dunno maybe she got curious. The cool thing is they did, didn’t they? They won. Freedom beat power.’

Aziraphale chewed at his bottom lip, ‘They won by giving angels and demons freedom too.’

‘Exactly,’ Crowley said with a wide grin, jabbing the air with his pointer finger. He shook his head and snorted, ‘Brilliant really. Clever humans.’

Aziraphale kept worrying at his bottom lip, hands twisting together in his lap, ‘But…but…’ his mouth felt dry. He cleared his throat and began again, ‘But that would mean it is all some kind of experiment, that it is all quite…’ he searched for the right word, lines appearing on his forehead as he found it, ‘quite heartless.’

Crowley shrugged again, ‘Or a game, I suppose. A great big game of chess.’

Aziraphale frowned, nose wrinkling up, ‘I…I don’t know that I like that,’ he said, shaking his head tightly.

Crowley snorted, ‘Didn’t think you would.’

They sat quietly for several moments, each of them taking a sip of wine. Aziraphale stared into his wine glass, gently swirling the red liquid and watching it spin. Eventually he spoke, blurting out, ‘How do you live in someone else’s game, Crowley? When you’re just a chess piece?’ 

‘I don’t, angel,’ Crowley said softly. Once again, he placed his glass on the table. He took Azriphrale’s glass out of his hands and placed that on the table too. Then he took Aziprahale’s hands in his own and squeezed them. He waited patiently for Aziraphale to meet his eye before saying, ‘I play my own game. You and me. What we do. That’s what matters because it _matters to me_. It matters _to us_. I don’t give a flying fuck about whether or not it matters to her. I play my own game.’

Aziraphale softened, tears welling in his eyes. He squeezed Crowley’s hands in return and leaned in for a kiss, his lips brushing against Crowley’s with painful softness, gentle and teasing and then, when Crowley whimpered, deeply, hungrily. Crowley moaned into Aziraphale’s mouth, hands reaching around Aziraphale’s body to stroke up and down his back. Aziraphale’s hands found Crowley’s hair and tangled themselves up in the ruby red locks, tugging another moan from Crowley’s mouth as they continued to kiss passionately.

Eventually, Crowley leaned back on the couch, pulling Aziraphale forward, so that his angel was lying on top of him. Mouths kissing all the time, fingers fussing about with buttons, Crowley’s hands finally finding their way into Azraiphale’s shirt to touch his soft flesh directly and make his angel gasp in pleasure.

Crowley hissed as they lined up. He bucked up eagerly, searching for the delicious friction. Aziraphale reciprocated with equal desire, grinding down to Crowley’s delight.

‘Oh, Crowley,’ Aziraphale gasped as they found the right rhythm. But then he suddenly stopped, pulling away from the kiss and looking out towards the Bookshop’s door.

Crowley hissed again, ‘don’t ssstop, angel.’

‘Did you sense something, just then?’ Aziraphale said with a little frown.

‘Yesss!’ Crowley replied, ‘Your cock! Don’t ssstop, angel!’

‘Only I thought I…’ Aziraphale’s voice trailed off as he tuned into his ethereal sight, looking around the bookshop from his position on top of Crowley.

Crowley sighed and pulled his hand out of Aziraphale’s shirt to tap his own temple, ‘No one there. Satisfied? Cause I’m not.’

‘Right,’ Aziraphale said, still looking about the shop, ‘I must have been mistaken.’

‘For hel- for heav- for the world’s sake, Aziraphale!’ Crowley cried out.

Aziraphale chuckled, his attentions at last returning to Crowley, ‘you impatient thing,’ he whispered, lips finding Crowley’s again, grinding into him hard and fast until they found their release. It proved to be a good appetiser for the many courses that followed.


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...  
> The spirits of the Garden of the Faithless Good are no longer in Aziraphale and Crowley's cottage garden. Now they reside in someplace new, someplace similar to the cottage garden but in a different aspect of reality altogether. 
> 
> Morgan has been putting off the biggest decision of all: what should she do with her life?

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A Bentley driving too fast from London to South Downs**

Crowley sped down the little road that led to their cottage, taking the curves at delicious speed. Aziraphale frowned in disapproval, bit his lip and held on, hands clutching tightly at his own seat. Crowley pulled into their driveway with expert skill, flicked the motor off and grinned to himself.

Aziraphale sighed in relief, hand fluttering over his heart. Saving the world, a second time seemed to have caused a little relapse in the very worst of Crowley’s driving. If he didn’t settle soon, Aziraphale would have to say something. Something quite stern.

Crowley rounded the car and opened the door.

‘Thank-you, dear,’ Aziraphale said, adding before he could stop himself, ‘maybe a little slower next time.’

Crowley pulled a face and waggled his head mockingly. But he also helped his angel out of the car, closing the door behind him and clicking his fingers to lock it as Aziraphale strode ahead and unlocked the door to their cottage.

Stepping inside, Aziraphale immediately frowned and glanced back to Crowley. As soon as Crowley saw Aziraphale’s expression he stiffened. Eyes darting about, he sped up and slipped ahead of Aziraphale. His eyes moved swiftly around the cottage, tuning in to the ethereal plane. ‘Empty. It’s all empty it’s…’ Crowley muttered, moving quickly to the big glass doors that opened up to their garden, clicking his fingers as he moved so they swung open instantly for him. Aziraphale followed, hands twisting together.

The garden was picturesque, green, and lit by perfect rays of soft sunshine. A postcard image. But it was also empty. And, somehow, empty of spirits, their cottage garden had never been more haunted. A shiver went up Crowley’s spine and he growled, ‘where are they?’

‘Don’t panic, dear,’ Aziraphale said worriedly, his twisting hands releasing each other for a moment to gesture, ‘I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation.’

‘There is indeed,’ a ghostly voice replied.

‘Arthur,’ Aziraphale sighed in relief, turning towards the voice.

Arthur smiled—as much as ghosts can be said to smile— as he floated amongst the lavender.

‘Where’s everyone else?’ Crowley asked, eyes narrowing.

‘They are perfectly alright and quite safe,’ Arthur replied reassuringly, ‘the best we can work out that is we seem to have created another garden, existing in some other aspect of reality.’

Aziraphale chewed his bottom lip as he took this in, ‘Like Heaven?’

‘Like Hell,’ Crowley drawled.

Aziraphale nodded, eyes wide.

‘We suspect so, yes,’ Arthur replied, ‘something about the amplification free will and the temporary malleability of reality coupled with our choice to appear and name ourselves as the third final destination for human souls,’ he shrugged ‘at least, that’s the working theory.’

Crowley sighed and ran his hands through his hair, ‘Right well. As long as Heaven and Hell haven’t got you all I suppose that’s alright.’

Arthur nodded, ‘Yes. We think so. It certainly gives us more room for expansion.’

Crowley snorted, ‘Been worrying about that. Thought we’d have to buy out the neighbours and if that didn’t work build up,’ he gestured up into the air.

Aziraphale’s gaze followed Crowley’s gesture and he frowned. Crowley hadn’t mentioned any of this to him.

‘Or maybe down,’ Crowley added.

Aziraphale looked to the ground and frowned harder.

Crowley snorted again, ‘this is better. For you lot, I mean. Plenty of room and you get your independence. You don’t need two occult beings fussing about, getting in the way. Good luck to you I say.’

‘Oh, our metaphysical connection to you two remains,’ Arthur clarified, ‘That hasn’t changed, and we are glad of it. We’ll be able to visit you easily. And we intend to do so, if you’ll have us. In fact, we would like to keep our close association with you both. We’d be asking for that with or without a metaphysical connection by the way. Carried by a unanimous vote in fact.’

‘Ah…you…ngh…’ Crowley spluttered in surprise.

‘Of course!’ Aziraphale enthused, clapping his hands together excitedly and bouncing a little on the soles of his feet.

‘Thank-you. You are highly regarded by all the members of the Garden of the Faithless Good. Both of you,’ Arthur said warmly, ‘I hope you know that.’

‘You are always welcome,’ Aziraphale said with a beaming smile, ‘all of you. We’ve come to cherish your presence in our lives as well.’

‘Thank-you,’ Arthur replied, getting a little choked up, ‘thank-you for everything. You’ve been most gracious hosts to our community. I don’t know what we’d have done without your support in the early days.’

Crowley tried to regain his composure. He shrugged, ‘S’alright. Don’t mention it.’

Arthur smiled broadly, ‘I am glad to be able to return your garden to you, Crowley. It is truly magnificent and I’m sure you’ll appreciate being able to tend to it without a multitude of spirits floating nearby.’

Crowley shrugged again, faux nonchalance slotting into place, ‘S’fine. Really, it’s…’ he paused. He chewed his lip, thinking something over. Then he sighed and slipped his sunglasses off, hooking them into his shirt. He smiled again, amber eyes gleaming, ‘S’fine. Happy to do it.’ 

Arthur saw Crowley’s eyes for the first time. He immediately noticed their resemblance to those of a serpent. Well, naturally, Arthur thought. Crowley was the serpent of Eden, after all. And the colour! It was like they were poured from molten gold. But, more importantly, within those golden eyes, Arthur could read Crowley’s heart. Arthur could see at once how much the spirits of the garden meant to him, he could see that Crowley was sincere. Arthur smiled warmly, ‘Thank-you, Crowley.’

Aziraphale’s eyes darted from Arthur to Crowley and back, his whole face lighting up with delight.

‘Well, I’d better return,’ Arthur continued after a pause, ‘I’ll visit again tomorrow morning, perhaps? We can sort out a protocol for visits then,’ Arthur smiled a little thinking of his own unfortunate timing the day before, ‘I’m sure you’ll be keen to re-establish your privacy, in all areas of your home.’

Aziraphale’s ears flushed a delicate shade of pink and he began to object, shaking his head, ‘Oh that’s…’ but then his eyes met Crowley’s and Crowley raised a single eyebrow at him. Aziraphale was reminded of all the things they used to be able to get up to in their garden. He cleared his throat, ‘Actually, that does sound rather appropriate.’

Arthur chuckled.

‘Until tomorrow, then,’ Arthur said with a little bow, ‘Goodbye,’ and with that he disappeared, allowing himself to be pulled back home.

Aziraphale sighed and shook his head, ‘well, that’s quite the development.’

‘Hm,’ Crowley drawled, ‘Just when you get used to living with over 200,000 spirits living in your garden, you have to get used to living without them.’

Aziraphale smiled at Crowley fondly, ‘They will visit, dear. I’m sure DaVinci will visit quite frequently.’

Crowley snorted, ‘Course he will. Anyway, good riddance. Nice to have the garden back.’

Aziraphale grinned and winked, ‘It does have its perks,’ he paused a moment and then added, ‘I’m proud of you by the way.’

‘Shuddup,’ Crowley growled, ‘we’re not talking about it.’

Aziraphale chuckled, ‘alright. Alright. But I _am_ proud.’

Crowley shook his head and began to stalk around the garden, casting his eyes about, surveying his plants, ‘I’m pretty sure the lavender has had enough of Arthur floating about in it. And they were frightening the roses.’

Aziraphale shook his head sceptically, ‘Frightening the roses?’

Crowley nodded, ‘Aha.’

‘But your whole gardening ethos is based on terrifying the plants,’ Aziraphale said with a frown, ‘That would be good then, surely?’

Crowley turned back to look at Aziraphale, mouth gaping open and shut in outrage, ‘My gardening ethos is based on providing proper motivation,’ he spluttered, ‘Whole different thing, angel.’

Aziraphale raised his hands defensively, ‘I clearly misunderstood.’

Crowley nodded sharply and went back to striding around their garden, checking on the plants. Aziraphale sat down on the bench, brushing down his trousers, and making himself comfortable in the morning sun, ‘still, it is quite peaceful.’

Crowley made a little noise of agreement. They continued like that for several minutes before Crowley came running back, his hands cupped around something.

Aziraphale frowned, ‘What is it, dear?’

‘A seedling,’ Crowley answered softly, almost reverently, ‘it was growing near the compost.’

Azraiphale’s eyebrows raised as he looked. Sure enough, Crowley’s hands were cupping a clump of dirt and in that clump of dirt a seedling was reaching up bravely, little green leaves searching for the sun. ‘Oh,’ Aziraphale gasped, ‘What is it?’

Crowley licked his lips, ‘An apple tree.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A London flat**

Evie woke early. She climbed out of bed carefully, letting Mia stay asleep. Ethan and Mia had stayed with them the previous night and it didn’t look like either of them were leaving anytime soon. They’d have to sort out more permanent accommodation to fit them all. Well, their arrangement with the person who owned the flat would end soon anyway.

They’d probably travel first. They’d discussed travelling the night before. Evie had suggested it, somewhat inspired by Jesus, and Mia and Ethan had responded enthusiastically. It made sense to Lil. Seeing the world seemed a logical way to find your place in it. But where should they start? The world was a big place. They needed a direction, somewhere to begin.

Although she was out of bed early, Evie wasn’t the first to wake. She found Lil in the lounge room, UD glasses on, frowning as she checked the news.

‘You’re up early,’ Evie said with a smile.

‘Oh!’ Lil exclaimed looking up, ‘yeah, I couldn’t sleep. Hey, Evie, listen to this.’

Lil tapped a few keys on her augmented reality screen, which to Evie looked like Lil jabbing at the air in front of her, and the voice of a news reader filled the room.

_Experts are comparing the recent waves of mass hysteria to a mass hysteria event that took place thirty years ago. The cause of the mass hysteria event in 2019 which included claims of alien visitation, sightings of the kraken, and the discovery of Atlantis, has never been concretely determined. Scientists are looking for possible connections between the two events, with the hope that this could lead to fresh insights._

Lil snorted as she jabbed at the air again, turning the news off. She slipped off her glasses, ‘they’re putting it all down to mass hysteria,’ she shook her head and laughed, ‘humans…’

Evie shook her head too and shrugged, ‘probably for the best, I suppose,’ she sat down next to Lil on the couch, ‘it’d be a bit much to get their heads around otherwise.’

‘Hm…’ Lil said, giving this some thought, ‘I suppose so. Though they may need to confront it all eventually. What with how differently all the angels and demons will be from now on.’

Evie nodded, forehead lined in thought, ‘I didn’t think of that. Someone’s bound to tell all at some point. Or just, be a lot more obvious. Give millions of beings choice, anything is bound to happen.’

Lil nodded, ‘uh-huh. At least once.’

‘Well, that’ll be interesting,’ Evie shrugged.

‘Hey, Evie,’ Lil said, changing the topic, ‘I have an idea.’ She picked up a cushion off the couch and began to pick at the beading on the front of it.

Evie’s eyes found Lil’s and she waited.

‘Do you still want to travel?’ Lil asked.

Evie nodded, ‘Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We just need somewhere to start.’

Lil grinned and threw the cushion onto the floor, ‘Fantastic. Perfect. Because, I was thinking, there’s someone I’d really like to meet. It’ll take a bit of digging. But I think we’ll be able to find them. Maybe we can start our travel there?’

‘Oh?’ Evie said, eyes wide, wheels turning quickly in her head, trying to puzzle it out, ‘who?’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**Liberty Lavender Farm and Bed and Breakfast**

Morgan sat in the morning sun and smiled. The fields of lavender shifted and moved in the breeze like waves on a strange purple sea, carrying their calming scent to Morgan’s nostrils. She breathed it in deeply. The youngest of their goats played in the little grassy field directly in front of her. One of the kids head butted a tree and fell over, shocked by the impact. Morgan giggled. She knew exactly how he felt.

Morgan had saved the world—well, played her part anyway— and in doing so she had experienced incredible things, wonderous things. She’d been part of history. And, after the relief and the celebrations, here was Morgan on the other side: still alive, still confused, and still needing to figure out what to do with her life, with the one life she had.

Except, somehow, that big horrible decision that had been looming ahead of her didn’t seem quite so big and awful. Somehow, it all now seemed quite clear. Seeing so many angels and demons seize free will with both hands had made Morgan realise that she had been treating her own freedom like a burden. And, you know what? It was. Freedom was often painful and stressful and generally horrid. But it was also a gift.

It wasn’t that Morgan was no longer confused. Nothing had dispelled her uncertainty. But Morgan now understood that her life wasn’t a maths problem with one right answer. It was her life. And it was hers _to live_. She needed to take a step—any step—down one of the many paths that stretched out before her and if that didn’t work out, well, she’d simply back-track and try something else. There would be choices that worked out and choices that didn’t and all of that was life.

Morgan heard footsteps behind her and turned. Her parents approached, walking up to stand behind her, Anathema smiling fondly and Newton holding out a cup of tea, ‘I put the kettle on. Thought you’d like a cuppa, sweat pea.’

Morgan smiled, ‘Thanks, dad.’ She reached out and took the cup, blowing on the tea to cool it enough to take a little sip.

Newton frowned as the kid that head-butted the tree earlier did it again, ‘he’s gonna give himself brain damage. Doesn’t learn that one. Or at the very least a bad headache.’

‘Might need some aspirin?’ Anathema said with a raised eyebrow and a little smile directed Newt’s way.

Newton blushed warmly as he always did when Anathema mentioned aspirin with just the right look on her face. Morgan had noticed that private joke long ago and simply accepted it as part of the familiar but mysterious dance of love between her parents.

‘I know what I’m going to do,’ Morgan announced confidently.

‘Oh?’ Newton said with a grin. Anathema turned; eyebrows raised. Morgan had their attention.

‘Whatever I want,’ Morgan said with a smile, ‘And if what I do doesn’t work, then I’ll try something else,’ she shrugged, ‘something will stick, huh?’

‘Thatta girl!’ Newton said with a grin. He shook his head, his eyes finding Anathema’s, ‘we raised her well.’

‘That we did,’ Anathema said with a proud smile. They watched the goats together for a few quiet moments in the warm sun, Newton and Morgan both sipping their teas, all of them chuckling at their antics.

‘What are you actually going to do though, Morgan dear?’ Anathema asked eventually, when it become clear that Morgan wasn’t going to offer up any details.

‘I’m going to design websites and the social media to go with them,’ Morgan answered at once, ‘it’s a portable business so I’ll be travel to America too. Spend some time with family there. Deepen my understanding of the occult,’ Morgan shrugged, ‘Then I dunno. Go from there. Maybe do a PhD. Maybe take the business to another level. Maybe I’ll meet someone or decide to have kids. We’ll see.’

‘It’s a good start,’ Anathema beamed.

‘Yes, it is,’ Newton agreed proudly, ‘That’s my girl.’

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Two days after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A cottage in Tadfield**

Adam slipped back into his kitchen, in search of something to offer for dessert. It was good to have The Them all together again. Not just together, but together with all the extras they’d collected over the years: Peppa’s wife Pheobe and daughter Poppy, Brain’s Chloe, and Wensleydale’s kids Harry and Oliver. Adam paused a moment just listening to the raucous laughter of them all, talking and playing out in his backyard. He grinned to himself.

Dog let out a little bark by his side and Adam looked down, ‘You’re right, Dog. Dessert. Kids need dessert and so do I. There’s gotta be something I can offer, huh?’

He began to rummage through the pantry, but his quest was soon interrupted by Pepper.

‘Adam?’ Pepper said, marching in.

Adam turned at once and grinned, ‘Pepper?’

‘Did we really do what I think we did?’ Pepper said, leaning over the benchtop, ‘Not just like, just before, but when we were kids?’

Adam nodded, eyebrows raised, ‘Pretty much.’

‘So, you’re the Antichirst?’ Pepper said, sceptically.

Adam shrugged, ‘I suppose. Could have been, anyway.’

‘Huh,’ Pepper licked her lips as she thought this through. She knew all too well how the corrupting influence of power worked. Adam was a rare person indeed. He held ultimate power in his grasp, and he hadn’t been corrupted. She was flooded with warm affection for her old friend. But she didn’t say any of this. Instead, she grinned and said, ‘You’re a bit of a wuss for the Anitchirst, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, thanks, Pepper, yeah, you know I stared down Satan and all as a kid but thanks,’ Adam said with a laugh, hearing the compliment buried under the teasing.

‘Hey, anytime,’ Pepper replied with a wink, ‘I’m always here when your ego needs deflation.’

A piercing shriek cut through the air. Both Adam and Pepper instantly recognised it as Poppy. Pepper rolled her eyes and said, ‘Oh hang on, she’ll be murdering Wensleydale’s boys again. Pheobe might need back up. Dunno what it is about those two that brings out her wild side.’

Adam chuckled to himself as Pepper raced back out to the yard to check on the children. He returned to his quest for dessert. Finding nothing but a disappointingly ordinary packet of biscuits in the pantry, he moved onto the fridge, and then the freezer. Freezer, yeah, that’s what he wanted. Ice-cream would be perfect. A nice big container of Neapolitan ice-cream. All the flavours: vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Bound to please the kids. Surely, there was one in there somewhere? He rummaged around and smiled, delighted as he found just what he was looking for. After all, Adam usually did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more to go! Unbelievable. Remember to bookmark or subscribe to the series Good to Great if you want to see more content when Great Omens ends. A oneshot focussing on that night at Crowley's will be coming out within several weeks of Great Omens finishing up. Thanks, everyone.


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously on Great Omens...
> 
> Lil has someone she wants to meet. But who?
> 
> Aziraphale and Crowley have their garden to themselves again.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Three months after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A Cemetery, across the road from Eden Maternity Hospital and up a bit (also somehwere in the region where Eden once stood)**

Evie, Lil, Ethan and Mia walked slowly through a sea of graves, the dry grass crunching under their feet. Some were old, their gravestones worn and chipped and some were new, freshly dug with plaques gleaming in the sunlight and covered in flowers left with love by the people the newly dead had left behind.

Ethan pulled Lil back, before she walked across a grave. Lil frowned at him and he grinned nervously, ‘doesn’t it disturb them or something,’ he explained pointing to the grave, ‘In the afterlife?’

Lil snorted, ‘no, that’s not a thing,’ she said as she proceeded to stride across.

‘Definitely not a thing,’ Evie confirmed with a shake of her head as she followed, ‘doesn’t bother them at all.’

Mia shrugged at Ethan, eyebrows raised, ‘well, they’d know, I guess?’

Ethan nodded. They would. They would indeed. He followed.

‘Nearly there,’ Lil called out, checking the numbers. They weren’t just on a stroll through the cemetery, they were searching for a particular grave.

Suddenly, Lil stopped. She swallowed hard, checked the name on the gravestone and checked the number of the allotment several times before she nodded and whispered hoarsely, ‘this is it.’

Evie checked the name and number of the allotment too, ‘yeah, this one,’ she said pointing at the gravestone as Mia and Ethan slipped into place at their sides.

The gravestone was ordinary. Just one in a sea of similar stones. Not too old and not too new. Meaningful to only Evie and Lil.

Evie took Lil’s hand.

Lil’s dark eyes flicked across to meet those of her sister. Their eyes were already filling with tears. Lil swallowed hard, ‘I just… I just… I wish we could have known her.’

Evie squeezed Lil’s hand and replied thickly, ‘Me, too.’

They stood together for several silent moments. Somewhere, a bird called out, a loud shrieking call.

Eventually, Ethan spoke, ‘She’d have been proud of you, you know.’

‘Absolutely,’ Mia agreed, ‘super proud.’

‘Hope so,’ Evie choked out.

Lil nodded, using the back of her hand to wipe away her tears.

Silence descended again. Evie and Lil’s eyes danced over the hard, grey block before them, reading the words on the slab over and over, taking in this last relic of the woman who had birthed them, taking in this cold, brutal link to their mother.

‘Mary Gardner,’ Mia read the name aloud. She chewed her lip, ‘are you going to take the surname?’

‘Oh yes,’ Evie said, a nod, ‘Yes, I think we should,’ she turned to Lil with raised eyebrows.

Lil nodded immediately, ‘Of course. Evie Gardner. Lil Gardner. I like it. And she deserves the recognition.’

They all turned back to the gravestone.

‘Do you really think they killed her?’ Ethan said quietly.

Lil snorted, ‘Of course they did,’ she shook her head, ‘she died giving birth to us. We end up being raised in Heaven and Hell with Gabriel and Beelezebub. It’s no coincidence. They killed her.’

‘Where is she now, then?’ Mia whispered.

‘Heaven,’ Evie answered without hesitation.

Lil looked at her, interested in her reasoning.

‘She gave us life,’ Evie explained, ‘Divine children. If that doesn’t get an automatic pass to Heaven, what does?’

Lil nodded thoughtfully, ‘Makes sense. Maybe you’re right.’

Evie nodded, ‘I just hope her last moments weren’t too awful.’

Lil frowned. Having your children stolen in the aftermath of birth and then being slaughtered by beings infinitely more powerful than you would be awful. That couldn’t not be awful.

‘I’m sure she fought valiantly,’ Ethan said, thinking along similar lines to Lil.

Lil nodded, ‘Of course she did. That’s why they killed her.’ Her heart welled in pride. And as the next thought came, she tripped right over it. ‘Oh, she fought _for us_ ,’ she whispered and, just like that, Lil could feel the love of a mother she had no memory of, trickling down through the years, unmistakable in her last living act.

Evie knelt on the ground and touched the grave with her outstretched palm. The stone was cold and rough to touch. ‘Thank-you, mum,’ she choked out.

Lil knelt beside her, reaching out to touch the cold gravestone for herself. She swallowed hard, tears welling again in her eyes, ‘Thanks for everything. Thanks for…well, for our lives. Thanks for fighting for us. I’m sorry they killed you. We’ll…we’ll find you. I promise. We’ll search Heaven and Hell for you if necessary.’

‘We love you,’ Evie added, as her tears broke free and ran down her cheeks. They stayed like that for quite some time, Mia and Ethan standing quietly behind them, guarding them in their grief.

Finally, Evie and Lil stood. Mia passed them both a posy of white flowers and they placed it on the gravestone with deliberate care. The flowers—snow-white and perfect—were a stark contrast to the drab grey of the stone.

Evie hugged Lil, and they took a moment to wipe away their tears. Mia took Evie’s hand and Ethan took Lil’s. And when they walked away, they walked away as Evie and Lil Gardner, children of a human mother. They were conceived in lust, nurtured in the warm meat of the body, and birthed into the world in passionate agony, excruciating effort, and selfless, unrelenting love, with midwife in dutiful attendance and blood-price paid. And their mother had been right, all those years ago. There are things in this world that angels and demons struggle to understand. Evie and Lil Gardner left the cemetery hand in hand with humanity as the rightful heirs to all that world has to offer, the good and the bad and the strange bargain between the two.

**Thirty years after the Armageddon-that-wasn’t**

**Six months after The Big One-that-wasn’t**

**A cottage in Devil’s Dyke, South Downs**

Aziraphale smiled to himself as he put the cake into the perfectly warmed oven and set the timer. He clapped his hands and wiggled in anticipation. He was tempted to use a miracle to make cleaning up easier, but he refrained. Aziraphale still had the lingering sense that it was more virtuous to roll up his sleeves, so to speak, and do it himself. Well, unless he really felt like using a miracle. All cleaned, he carefully removed and folded up his white baking apron, returning it to the appropriate drawer. He turned to find Crowley behind him, wiping down the benchtop.

‘I’ve already cleaned up!’ Aziraphale cried.

‘I know, ‘m doing it properly,’ Crowley replied.

Aziraphale sighed, resigned, ‘if you must.’

‘Watcha baking?’ Crowley asked, still wiping down the benchtop.

‘Sponge cake,’ Aziraphale replied, ‘I have strawberries and cream here all ready when it’s cooked and cooled, and I’ve already made a date and walnut loaf and some custard tartlets. I was thinking we could have a nice afternoon tea in the garden.’

‘Yeah, alright,’ Crowley drawled, ‘ve gotta check on the plants first. I’ll do that once I’ve finished cleaning up your mess.’

Aziraphale’s gaze was drawn immediately to the large glass doors, leading out to the garden. He thought of the seedling that Crowley had found the day they’d returned to the cottage, an apple tree. Crowley had planted it—found a nice spot just beyond the lavender, far enough from the cottage and other trees to not cause any trouble—and he’d taken care of it.

Aziraphale had watched him water it and fertilise it and fret over it, his own heart swelling fondness. But, despite Crowley’s tender care, the seedling hadn’t grown at all. Not one bit. It was beginning to make Aziraphale nervous. He feared that the seedling might soon find itself banished. He remembered the confident growth that their other apple tree had shown as soon as it was planted. That hadn’t happened this time. This seedling was different.

Aziraphale cleared his throat nervously, determined to raise the topic before things spiralled out of control, ‘that…er…that seedling doesn’t seem to have grown, does it?’ Aziraphale said, a little crease of worry marking his forehead.

Crowley shrugged, ‘Concentrating on its roots.’

Aziraphale nodded thoughtfully, ‘hm. I haven’t noticed you motivating it too much…’

Crowley chewed at his lip, ‘I am. Just trying a different mix. Bit of that other thing you use instead of sticks. Turnips? Potatoes?’ He frowned, ‘C’mon it’s a vegetable, help me out here, angel.’

‘Carrot?’ Aziraphale supplied.

‘That’s it!’ Crowley cried, clicking his fingers, ‘carrot. Sticks _and_ carrots. I reckon that’s the winning formula.’

‘I see,’ Aziraphale said thoughtfully, ‘and you don’t think something's wrong with the seedling then?’

Crowley shrugged again with cultivated nonchalance, ‘Nah. It sprouted all by itself, angel. Found its own way. It’s a survivor all right. S’just concentrating on its roots first, that’s all.’

Aziraphale smiled fondly. Of course. Like Crowley, the seedling was pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. He coughed delicately again and got to the heart of the matter, ‘Not tempted to stage a little execution? Banish it from the garden?’ Aziraphale said carefully, eyebrows raised.

Crowley shrugged again, not making eye contact, voice sounding a little strained, ‘Nah. Doin’ its best,’ he paused a moment and added, a little hoarsely, ‘Don’t deserve to the punished for doin’ its best.’

Aziraphale beamed, little tears prickling at his eyes. He shook his head and reached out, touching Crowley’s face gently. With the feeling of Aziraphale’s fingers caressing his face, Crowley’s eyes found Aziraphale’s. Contact made, Aziraphale spoke softly, a little choked up, ‘No, no _you don’t_.’

Crowley’s eyes widened immediately, and he gestured wildly, brandishing the cleaning cloth, still in his hand, ‘Shuddup. ‘m not talking about me.’

‘Of course not, dear,’ Azraiphale said with a knowing smile, ‘of course not.’

‘m still gonna yell at them,’ Crowley growled.

‘I should hope so,’ Azraiphale said with a nod, ‘you’re only doing your best, after all. I dare say, even your temper has its place.’

‘You’re insufferable,’ Crowley groaned, ‘Who is it? Freud? Jung? Erikson? Lacan? Please not Lacan. No one understands Lacan. Lacan didn’t understand Lacan.’

Azraiphale shook his head, ‘I’m reading quite a fascinating book by a modern author, published just last year. Did you know the fields of psychiatry, psychology and counselling have come along in leaps and bounds in the past one hundred years?’

Crowley grimaced dramatically, ‘Course they have. Everything has. Of all the things to get up to date with, angel.’

‘It’s been most interesting and informative,’ Azraiphale replied with a decisive nod.

Crowley sighed a long-suffering sigh, ‘m gonna go check on the plants. See you out there soon, yeah?’

‘Crowley?’ Aziraphale said, a flutter of nerves in his voice.

Crowley turned back, eyebrows raised, questioning, ‘Yeah?’

‘I’ve been reading some other books too.’

Crowley shrugged. What was new about that? Aziraphale was always reading books.

Azraiphale cleared his throat, ‘Books on theology and philosophy of religion. I’ve been reading some recent publications and re-reading many of the classics.’

‘Right,’ Crowley replied in a slow careful drawl, ‘Helpful?’

Aziraphale nodded his head and chewed at his bottom lip, ‘Rather. I’ve been giving it all a lot of thought.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes,’ Azraiphale said. He paused for a moment and licked his lips, ‘And…and… I’ve decided that I have faith in her still…’ he said, building momentum, ‘In fact, I’m finding my faith in the Almighty quite renewed.’

Crowley nodded slowly; eyebrows raised. He shifted uncomfortably then he shrugged, ‘alright then.’

Aziraphale chewed at his bottom lip, ‘I know you think that makes me quite silly…stupid even. Thinking it is all part of some great, ineffable plan, believing that she loves us all but I…’

‘No!’ Crowley cried out, taking Azraiphale’s hands in his, ‘No,’ he shook his head, ‘no, Aziraphale. You are the cleverest being I’ve ever met. And yeah, I don’t agree with you, on this point and on many others come to think of it, and I do think it’s stupid to be honest,’ he snorted and Aziraphale flinched.

Crowley sighed, ‘nah, look that’s not what I mean. What I mean is you are still clever, yeah? Cleverest person I know. And this, now, it is your choice, yeah? Not just having faith cause you’ve been told to. _Your_ choice?’

Aziraphale nodded decisively, ‘It is.’

Crowley grinned widely, ‘then ‘m proud of you.’

‘You are?’ Aziraphale gasped.

‘Course I am,’ Crowley said, ‘couldn’t be prouder.’ He leaned in and planted a soft kiss on Azraiphale’s mouth. Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered shut and he deepened the kiss, his tongue finding warm welcome in Crowley’s mouth. Aziraphale moaned softly.

Eventually, thoroughly kissed, Crowley pulled back and looked at Aziraphale with gentle and enduring affection, ‘meet you in the garden, angel?’

‘Always, my dear,’ Aziraphale replied. He smiled fondly, ‘Always.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I can hardly believe it but that is it. I want to say a huge thanks to everyone who has been reading this fic as it was being written, especially those of you who took the time to leave kudos or comments. Every comment means so much! 
> 
> To the new readers, who may have been waiting for the fic to be complete or may be yet to discover it, comments always make my day. If you have the time and ability, I'd be delighted to receive yours, and I promise I will receive it even if years have now passed. If commenting isn't your thing, no worries at all. 
> 
> I've made this fic part of a series From Good to Great because there's more to come. In particular, a continuation of the bus ride and that fateful night at Crowley's will be posted within the next several weeks. I'm also planning a whole other sequel fic that will occur in between Good Omens and Great Omens. So bookmark or subscribe to the series for more.
> 
> Thanks so much everyone. Take care.


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